


Crooked Neighbors

by earlybloomingparentheses



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Cross-Generation Relationship, M/M, Minerva McGonagall the self-appointed HR rep, More like not-so-casual sex, Prisoner of Azkaban Era, Prostate Milking, Queer History, Spans all of PoA, Threesome, not exactly a romance, sex potion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-05
Updated: 2020-07-02
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:55:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 37,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24542680
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/earlybloomingparentheses/pseuds/earlybloomingparentheses
Summary: Somewhere inside him is a tangled, snarled knot where all of his feelings about Albus Dumbledore have been compounding for more than two decades, twisting and growing together until the gratitude is inseparable from the resentment and the resentment is inseparable from the admiration and the admiration is inseparable from the roiling, rising rage.Remus comes to work at Hogwarts. He discovers that, a long time ago, Albus Dumbledore had his own Sirius Black. Albus, in the ways that he can, helps him cope.
Relationships: Albus Dumbledore/Elphias Doge, Albus Dumbledore/Remus Lupin, Past Remus Lupin/Sirius Black, Remus Lupin/Albus Dumbledore/Elphias Doge, past Albus Dumbledore/Gellert Grindelwald - Relationship
Comments: 46
Kudos: 77





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> "You shall love your crooked neighbor  
> With your crooked heart."
> 
> -W.H. Auden

“It’s Albus now.”

Remus has just been hired to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts. Remus is wearing a jacket that has been patched with Illusion Charms at its threadbare elbows. Remus is standing in the spacious headmaster’s office amidst portraits of old professors and gleaming magical contraptions and valuable, intimidating books, the office where Professor Dumbledore once welcomed him kindly to Hogwarts, where he sometimes scolded the four of them for causing mischief yet again, where, one grey morning, he spoke with Remus gravely about a moonlit near miss with Severus Snape and for a heart-stopping handful of minutes Remus thought his life as he knew it was over. Professor Dumbledore is standing in front of him now, wearing rich plum-colored robes and half-moon glasses and looking barely any older than when Remus first met him all those years ago. But he is not Professor Dumbledore anymore. He is Albus.

“Yes, sir. Er. Albus.”

The name tastes strange on Remus’ tongue. Here in this moment he feels as young as he has ever been—a scrawny, inexperienced boy in front of this magnificently aged man—and also as old as he has ever been. He is holding a briefcase. He is Professor Lupin.

Dumbledore— _Albus_ —smiles at him.

Remus swallows hard, pushing down yet another _thank you_ and with it the sour aftertaste that has always accompanied his gratitude toward this man. He has, he reminds himself, been given this position because he is qualified for it. Just as he was given a spot at Hogwarts because he was owed one. He is not here because of Albus Dumbledore’s pity.

Remus has sometimes thought it would be easier if Dumbledore did pity him. The fact that the old man never treated him any differently from James or Peter or—or anyone else has always made Remus feel doubly ungrateful because of his occasional, if well hidden, flashes of resentment towards the headmaster, in whose debt he will remain, whatever the man himself says, for the rest of his life.

“I’m looking forward to having you on our staff,” Dumbledore—Albus—says, smiling at him. “I think you’ll be good for our students.”

“I’m looking forward to being here.” Remus offers Albus a smile in return. It is a very specific kind of smile, mild and diplomatic, born of years of covering for his troublemaking friends, and of needing to appear as unthreatening as possible despite his frequent cuts and bruises that suggest _bar fight_ and _bad temper_. It feels strange on Remus’ face. He is out of practice. Years of living alone in the country, making a living by editing textbooks from his home, has decreased the need for such a smile. Yet the muscles in Remus’ face have no trouble remembering it.

“You should find your quarters quite comfortable, and your classroom well-equipped when you return for the start of term,” Albus says as Remus turns to go. “Although I have found that a certain, er…floral sort of fragrance is still hanging about. From the last occupant, I think.”

Remus frowns uncertainly.

“I believe it was hair serum.” Albus gives a delicate cough. “Though it may have been an attempt at cologne.”

Then Remus remembers who the last occupant of his rooms would have been. He lets out a bark of a laugh, startling himself.

“I remember him from school. He was, what, three, four years younger than us?” The memory comes tumbling out of his mouth—another effect, perhaps, of living alone, less ability to keep his thoughts to himself. “He used to brew perfume potions in the boys’ bathroom because his roommates wouldn’t let him do it in the Ravenclaw tower. He’d trail the smell of gardenias down the corridors.”

Albus’ eyes twinkle. “Perhaps we ought to have made him Potions master instead.”

“Honestly, the perfumes weren’t bad.” Remus is smiling at the image of thirteen-year-old Gilderoy Lockhart stepping pompously through the school, golden hair carefully curled, but then another memory intrudes—laughter from a group of older students, Peter amongst them, and the words _pansy_ and _poof_ and _poncey little queen_ making their way toward Remus’ ears. He had mentioned it to Peter, later. _Oh_ , Peter had said, looking surprised. _I didn’t mean—well, you and Sirius are different, you know? You’re not like_ that _._

Remus pulls himself from the memory. Albus is watching him thoughtfully, blue eyes glittering beneath silver brows. Remus has the distinct impression Albus knows, more or less, what Remus is thinking.

“Well,” Remus says quickly. Merlin, the man still manages to make him feel uncomfortably exposed with a single glance. “Best be getting on, then.”

“Yes. I’ll see you at the start of term feast. And I’ll make sure there’s something chocolate for dessert.” Albus smiles. “Still your favorite?”

Remus stares. “I—yes.” He hadn’t known Albus knew.

“Wonderful.” Albus reaches out and shakes Remus’ hand. His grasp is firm, firmer than that of any old man Remus has ever known, though his skin is dry and slightly papery. It is warm, too. He remembers that from school, a brief touch on his hand or shoulder, usually after the full moon; Dumbledore’s touch has always been warm.

“Thank you,” Remus says, because he can’t help himself.

Albus nods. “Thank _you_ , Remus.”

And Remus leaves, walking out of the headmaster’s office as a brand-new Hogwarts professor.

Remus had never intended to become a teacher. There were many career paths closed to him, of course, and although he had always assumed teaching was among them, he had never felt much regret about it. He would not, he thought, be a good teacher. That required a firmness, a steadiness, that he lacked. If he could not stop his friends talking through History of Magic, why would he be able to stop anyone else? And he would feel a hypocrite: he could not act the disciplinarian when he had broken so many rules himself. In all honesty, in a class as mind-numbingly taught as History of Magic, he didn’t see why the students should have to pay attention anyway. He couldn’t see himself enforcing deadlines with the strictness of McGonagall or Flitwick; he knows all too well what pressure the ins and outs of life can put on young people— _yes, getting a Howler from your mum shouting about your poor grades in front of the entire school_ is _a perfectly reasonable excuse for not having done your essay,_ he imagines himself saying. Of course teaching is not all about rules, but the rest of it seems even further out of Remus’ skill set. How could he mentor anybody? What does he know about children? He was barely a child himself.

So he enters Hogwarts a second time feeling as though he does not belong there. He had thought the castle might seem smaller now that he is an adult, but it doesn’t; it is as enormous and intimidating as it has ever been. His encounter with the Dementors on the train—with Harry—wrong-foots him from the start. He walks into the Great Hall too late for the Sorting. For a dizzying moment, he doesn’t know where to sit. Then Albus Dumbledore meets his eye across the hall and gives him a small smile, and Remus makes his way towards his place at the head table, swallowing down the panic that has bubbled up inside him and keeping his expression calm. “Welcome,” Pomona Sprout whispers to him. “Glad to have you back.”

“Glad to be back,” Remus replies quietly, though he is not sure it is true.

The first week at Hogwarts is utterly overwhelming. It is not even the classes that are the most exhausting: much to Remus’ surprise, they go just fine, with no huge mishaps or messes. The rest of life in the castle, however, is such a different beast from the last lonely twelve years that Remus feels a constant urge to hide away. When he is not teaching or at meals, he tends to spend time by himself in his cramped stone rooms, both because he is unused to being around so many people and because he keeps being struck suddenly by memories of his friends—James pulling a book about love potions from the library shelf and waggling his eyebrows, Peter shrieking and covering himself as Moaning Myrtle emerges suddenly from the toilet. Sirius, whose image he has long tried to bar from his mind, is more present to Remus that he has been in years; Sirius in the corridors, Sirius in the Great Hall, Sirius grinning up at him from the grassy lawn, hair falling with infuriating grace across his pale forehead. And he cannot shake the suspicion that all his colleagues who taught him back then are watching him with curious sympathy, wondering if it’s going to be too much for him to spend his days at Hogwarts when most of the friends he met there are dead.

But about a week into term, he feels composed enough to brave the staff lounge, a welcoming wood-paneled chamber filled with tatty rugs and plush sofas, heavy old tables and cups of tea. He waves hello to Sybill Trelawney, who stares mournfully at him through round glasses as if envisioning his imminent demise, and chats briefly with Filius Flitwick about the rather rowdy crop of Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws they both teach on Wednesdays. Then he sits alone, sipping Earl Grey and taking notes for his next lesson, letting his muscles unclench bit by bit. They immediately seize up again, however, when he is interrupted by an extremely unwelcome voice.

“Lupin,” says Severus Snape. The oily-haired man is standing in front of him, lip curled. Remus’ stomach drops. He’s avoided Snape so far, passing quickly in the corridors and sitting far away at meals. He has assumed—hoped—that Snape would do the same. His hackles still rise at the sight of the man, but he also carries around a certain amount of guilt for the ways that they all tormented him at Hogwarts, though of course, a voice in his head always answers defensively, he was tormenting them right back. If Remus had his way, they’d never interact one-on-one again. But he looks up warily.

“I…have something for you,” Snape says. He speaks the words reluctantly, like they’re a sour food he doesn’t want in his mouth.

“What is it?” Remus asks, keeping his tone as neutral as possible.

Snape scowls at him. After a moment, he thrusts his hand into his cloak and pulls out a little bottle. It’s green glass, with a brown stopper. It’s filled with a dark, thick-looking sludge.

Remus stares at the bottle. He cannot imagine why in the world he would drink a potion made by Severus Snape.

Snape lets out an impatient huff. “It’s Wolfsbane,” he says.

Remus’ brain sort of—seizes. He opens and closes his mouth several times. Snape watches him with drawn brows as he struggles to speak.

“Do you mean—are you saying it’s—”

“The extremely new, extremely difficult, and extremely expensive werewolf antidote? Yes. Take it during the day of the full moon, before the sun sets. When you…transform…you will be able to lie down and sleep until the moon sets.”

Remus’ heart is pounding. “But—but—”

“Yes?”

“How…” He breathes. “How do you know it will work?”

Snape’s lip curls. “Because I am a far superior Potions master than you could ever hope to be.”

Remus shakes his head. “No. I didn’t mean—I just—it’s barely out of trials, isn’t it? There have been stories of successful cases, but they’re anecdotal—it’s not approved by the Ministry yet. How…”

“Go down the tunnel the first time you use it,” Snape says, a little begrudgingly. “Stay in the Shack, just in case. But it _will_ work. And the Ministry…” He hesitates. “Dumbledore has a lot of sway. He told me to brew it, so I did. Take it up with him if you have a problem with it.”

Remus almost laughs. A problem. A _problem._

He stares at the bottle again. It’s so improbably small.

“Thank you,” he blurts out, because Snape is turning to go, and Snape has no reason whatsoever to help him, and if the potion works he will never, ever be able to thank him properly.

Snape gestures dismissively, nose twitching as if he’s smelled something foul. “Well, now no students are likely to be lured down the tunnel to be brutally murdered by a slavering werewolf. Consider it a service to them.”

He leaves. Remus stares after him. He feels the sting, of course he does, but as if from far away. The bottle sits before him, looking impossibly innocuous. He’s still turning it over in his hands fifteen minutes later when Minerva McGonagall and Poppy Pomfrey enter the teachers’ lounge, talking quietly to each other.

“Hello, Remus!” says Poppy, smiling. She has been, of all the staff, the most welcoming and obviously pleased to see Remus back at school. He hadn’t really realized how fond of him she had become from all those post-full-moon mornings of Skele-Gro and healing salves. When Remus was in her care, she had been brisk but kind—kinder than most Healers, he knows, many of whom wouldn’t (and still won’t) touch a werewolf for fear of some sort of accidental transmission, apocryphal though that possibility is. Remus has strong sensory memories of her cool hands rearranging his pillows and smoothing his blankets.

“Hi, Mada—Poppy,” he says. He sounds a little dazed, even to himself. He shakes himself slightly. “Hello, Minerva. Erm…”

“Are you quite all right, Remus?” Minerva asks.

“I.” He opens his mouth, then closes it again. “Snape…Severus just…” He nods at the little bottle of Wolfsbane.

“Oh, wonderful!” Poppy beams. “Albus told me he was going to brew that for you. Normally I wouldn’t approve of potions not yet certified by the Ministry, but Severus is really so talented, and, well…” She blinks rapidly and her voice comes out a little choked. “It’ll be so good for you, Remus. So good. I can’t tell you, all those mornings, you so small and so brave, in such pain but never complaining…”

Her voice trails off. Minerva puts a hand briefly on her shoulder. Remus, for the second time that morning, feels incapable of stringing together any useful words at all. Embarrassment turns slowly over in his stomach at Poppy Pomfrey’s little speech; as always, pity barbs him and attention makes him want to hide, but there is something else there, too—he hadn’t known, he really hadn’t known she cared so much.

“How are your classes?” Minerva asks briskly. Gratefully collecting himself, Remus clears his throat.

“Good. Fine. Yes. They’re going reasonably well, I think, for my first week.” An image of his third-years’ first lesson appears in his mind: his moon-shaped Boggart, him slipping in front of Harry to avoid Voldemort’s materialization in the classroom, and Severus Snape in full drag, vulture-topped hat and all. He feels a slight pang of remorse for that now, which is annoying.

There’s a knowing look in Minerva’s eye that suggests she is perfectly aware of what happened during that particular class period. He hopes she doesn’t think he thinks men in dresses are inherently funny. He also hopes she doesn’t judge him too much for thinking that Severus Snape in Neville’s grandmother’s clothes _is_ inherently funny. Especially not now that he’s got this little potion bottle sitting in front of him, like a bomb that hasn’t yet detonated.

“I’m sure you’re a wonderful teacher,” Poppy says, smiling.

Remus isn’t at all sure he’s a wonderful teacher, despite the relative success of his first week. He has so little experience; he is still, himself, so untested in the wider world. He feels rather a fraud, in fact, but he doesn’t say that to her, or to Minerva, who is in fact the best teacher he ever had and whose combination of intelligence, discipline, and deep care for her students he knows he will never be able to match.

“I hope so,” he says. “I’m certainly trying to be.”

A cold morning, two weeks into term. The corridors are drafty and leaves are falling from the big old trees on the grounds. It’s a Saturday, and the crisp smell of the autumn air is comforting in a way Remus had forgotten it could be.

His bedroom is cold, and he awakens to a cheerful fire already lit in his tiny sitting room. He thinks: breakfast in the Great Hall, then tea in his office with the stack of sixth-year essays on detecting deception charms. Maybe a walk later, along the lake, if he’s feeling up to chatting with any students or colleagues who might say hello. A cozy day. Peaceful, even.

The plan falls apart halfway through his porridge when a message arrives for Remus at the head table from Albus Dumbledore.

_Remus,_

_I must have missed you at breakfast this morning—I was up rather early, basking in the autumnal weather. Would you mind stopping by my office this afternoon? There’s something I’d like to speak with you about. Today’s password is licorice wand._

_A._

Remus lets his spoon drop back into his bowl. His stomach curls.

“All right there?” Filius Flitwick asks. He’s just arrived and is heaping tremendous portions of bacon, tomatoes, and beans onto his plate.

“Yes,” says Remus hastily. “Just fine. Thanks.”

Flitwick tucks in. Remus stares at the note. He has been waiting for the other shoe to drop since he stepped into his classroom the first day of term. When he was eleven and new to Hogwarts, he’d spent months expecting to be sent home as soon as somebody realized how dangerous, how absurd, it was for him to be there. His fears now are uncannily similar. Outraged parents finding out, or students studying the moon cycle in Astronomy and matching it with Remus’ absences, or Ministry officials suddenly connecting the dots between the werewolf registry and the Hogwarts faculty—there are so many ways it could all go pear-shaped.

He abandons his porridge and heads to his office. He makes tea, but it goes cold as he works his way through mediocre essays, anxiety and dread congealing into a hard ball in his gut. He tells himself that Dumbledore might want to see him for all sorts of reasons—not least because of a certain incident with a Boggart and Neville Longbottom’s grandmother’s hat—and he knows, rationally, that this is true. But his stomach continues to churn, and his mind won’t focus.

He goes to Dumbledore’s office as early as he possibly can without seeming rude or overeager, arriving at the gargoyles at 1:56 p.m. “Licorice wand,” he murmurs, and the stairway opens up. 

The headmaster is looking out the window when Remus enters. When he turns to greet him, Remus’ heart sinks. Albus’ face doesn’t look grave; it looks, in fact, too bright, cheerful in a brittle sort of way. Remus’s wariness is increased by the fact that he’s used to not being able to read him: Dumbledore is the master at not giving away what he’s thinking. But now, Remus can’t help but catch some peculiar energy in the wave of Dumbledore’s hand as he gestures to the tea laid out on a small table. He can tell something isn’t right.

“Tea?” the headmaster asks, stepping towards Remus. “How do you take it?”

“Er,” Remus says, “milk, no sugar, please.”

He doesn’t want tea, but politely accepts the cup Albus proffers. Both of them sit.

“I should have guessed,” Dumbledore says, smiling. “You don’t strike me as one for overly sweet tea.”

“No,” says Remus awkwardly. His pulse is racing. He sips the tea, burning his tongue.

“How are you settling in?”

“Well, thank you. It’s a bit of an adjustment, teaching, but…I think it’s going well.”

“Good, good. Glad to hear it.”

Surely Dumbledore wouldn’t ask about teaching if he’s planning to give Remus the sack? Though that doesn’t mean there haven’t been complaints brewing. He takes another nervous sip and again burns his tongue.

Albus sets his cup down with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Remus, I didn’t ask you here just to chat. I…have something I think you ought to know.”

Sourness surges through Remus’ stomach. He keeps his face quite impassive. “Yes?”

“Yes. I…” Dumbledore pauses, then appears to collect himself. His voice is steady now. “I have recently been talking with some colleagues at the Ministry. Specifically, in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, and in the Wizengamot.”

_Oh, god,_ Remus thinks, stomach dropping, _more werewolf legislation?_

“Sometime in the next several months,” Dumbledore continues, “there is very likely going to be an announcement that if and when Sirius Black is caught, he will be given the Dementor’s Kiss.”

Remus’ mind goes quite blank. A peculiar whirring starts up in his ears.

“Oh,” he says. “Well. I suppose that’s not entirely unexpected.”

A pause. Remus is aware that some part of him is screaming, but his body remains quite calm. His hand reaches out picks up his tea. He takes another sip.

“Remus.” Startled, Remus looks up at the strange cracked note in Albus’ voice. The headmaster touches his hand very briefly to Remus’, then pulls back. Remus stares at him. Dumbledore’s eyes are glistening, blue and bright.

The part of Remus that is screaming turns its attention to this inexplicable phenomenon. _Dumbledore was never even very close to Sirius,_ this part of him points out, vicious: _You were his friend, his lover. You should be crying, not him—what has he ever done for Sirius—how dare he—_

“What—?” he begins, and falls silent as a single tear spills over and falls down Dumbledore’s wrinkled cheek.

Quickly, Dumbledore stands, brushing the tear away, and steps away to the window. Remus watches him, confounded.

“I’m sorry,” he says, turning back to Remus. “For a moment you—” More tears well up. “You reminded me so much of myself.”

Remus’ mind isn’t working properly. There does not seem to be a way to process that statement, let alone respond to it.

“What…”

Albus looks at him for a long, long moment. Then, as if making up his mind, he steps over to a cupboard and pulls out a cauldron. No, Remus recognizes, not a cauldron; it’s a Pensieve, and the opalescent liquid moving sinuously within it is comprised of memories.

Dumbledore touches the tip of his wand to the gleaming surface and pulls out a long, silvery strand. Above the Pensieve, the strand weaves itself into a shape. The image of two young men appears. One of them, Remus is certain, is Albus himself. The other is a handsome golden-haired boy in his late teens.

“Do you know who this is?” Dumbledore asks quietly.

Remus shakes his head. Dumbledore waves his wand again, and the other boy separates from the young Albus and begins to age. His shoulders broaden, his long hair shortens, and his eyes grow sharper and colder.

“That’s—” Remus blinks. “That’s Gellert Grindelwald.”

“Yes,” says Albus. The figure transforms back into its younger self. The image of the teenage Albus smiles at him. Grindelwald takes Albus’ hands and, after a quick mischievous look around, leans in and kisses him on the mouth.

Dumbledore waves his wand. The figures melt back into the Pensieve. Remus stares at the space where they’d been, ears ringing.

Albus Dumbledore, kissing someone.

Albus Dumbledore, kissing a man.

Albus Dumbledore, kissing Gellert Grindelwald.

“I knew him.” Dumbledore is looking down at the desk now, speaking quietly. “We were young together. I loved him. It is possible that that blinded me to what he was already becoming. I had no inkling at the time. Ever since, I have blamed myself for not recognizing it sooner.”

Remus’ breath catches in his throat. He has seen the images: Grindelwald making a Pureblood salute, Grindelwald pounding his fist and vowing to crush Muggles under his foot, Grindelwald shaking hands with Adolf Hitler. “You fought him,” he says abruptly, the words falling out of his mouth. “You defeated him. In 1945.”

“Yes.”

Remus imagines facing down Sirius Black. He imagines himself in Peter’s place, trembling and shouting in the street. Imagines seeing Sirius’ eyes glitter cold and alien. His hand jerks and splatters tea on the table.

Albus is watching him. He looks as small and vulnerable as Remus has ever seen him. He looks, Remus realizes, as if he is awaiting condemnation.

“I blame myself,” Remus says hoarsely. “For Sirius.”

Albus bows his head. When he looks up again, Remus thinks—incredibly—that he sees relief in the elderly man’s eyes.

He is certainly relieved that Albus does not try to tell him not to blame himself.

“You’re—” _queer,_ Remus almost says. But he stops himself. His incredulity comes not only from the fact that his former headmaster sleeps with men, but that he sleeps with anyone at all. It is hard to imagine. He is so aloof. And so _old._

“I am,” says Dumbledore, and of course he can guess what Remus was thinking. Embarrassed, Remus lowers his eyes. There’s a silence.

“How,” Remus begins. He falls silent once more. “How did you—how do you—” He takes a deep shuddering breath. A churning sensation is filling his stomach, jumbling up his insides. Dumbledore— _knows_. He—it’s the same, what happened to him, a first love, a _man_ , a betrayal. Remus has always thought…He breathes again. For the last twelve years, Remus has turned away from anyone who claimed to understand, even in some small portion, the sort of pain he was going through. They could not understand. They couldn’t feel, couldn’t guess, how thorny and complicated it was, guilt and anger and sorrow and, somehow, fear—fear come too late—and how it was all tangled up in his throat, a tight ball that made it hard to breathe. They didn’t know the pinpricks that struck him in the chest and stomach and heart whenever he smelled cigarette smoke or raspberry jam or the slightly too thick musk of a particular brand of cologne and for one heart-stopping minute felt his spirits lift. They didn’t, couldn’t, understand why he shut himself up in that shitty little house, miles from the nearest neighbor, for all those years.

But Dumbledore—Albus. Albus understands.

Remus had not known it was possible. He feels a wash of limb-loosening gratitude uncoil inside him, and immediately afterwards, a wave of resentment— _my pain_ , _how dare anyone share it_ —and then a crushing exhaustion. All at once he feels wrung out like an old blanket.

“How did you carry on?” he asks quietly.

Albus considers. The fine lines at his eyes deepen slightly. His long, thin fingers steeple. “The same way you did, I suppose,” he replies eventually. “Without really knowing how I was doing it.”

Remus exhales.

“I did throw myself into my work quite a bit, in those first years,” Albus adds. “At the time, I was midway through the dragon’s blood project, and I became rather obsessed. The more I dedicated myself to my research, the less time I had to think about him. And I closed myself off. To other people. Too dangerous, too difficult. Although…” His lips twist into a wry smile. “I did distract myself with quite a lot of risky sexual intercourse. Anonymous men—the number of times I might have been caught, back in those days when the consequences would have been dire…it wasn’t very wise.”

Remus stares. He can feel his pulse beating in his neck. “Did it—” he starts. He swallows hard. “Did it work?”

Albus looks at him steadily. “In the long term? Not at all. But…” He tilts his head, eyes still on Remus’. “I do have to say that it was effective in the moment.”

A beat. Something pulses in the air between them. Images and sounds play in Remus’ head: fragments of dark rooms and cut-off gasps, grasping fingers and stifled moans. Dumbledore’s eyes are cool, pale blue. Hastily, Remus breaks his gaze.

“Er,” he says, clearing his throat.

Dumbledore stands. “I am sorry, Remus. About the Dementor’s Kiss.”

Pain throbs through him at the reminder of this news. “Thank you,” he says. “Though I’m not sure if I am.”

He feels a hand on his wrist. Looking up, he sees Albus’ face looking down at him with far too much compassion and understanding. “That is not a fate anyone should suffer,” he says quietly. “No matter what they have done.”

Of course. Albus knows that Remus does not want Sirius to receive the Kiss. He probably knows that Remus still aches for Sirius sometimes, in the middle of the night; would probably even understand, if he knew about it, why Remus has not let Harry Potter know he used to be amongst his parents’ best friends. Why, whenever Remus opens his mouth to do so, his words freeze in his throat.

“I should go,” he says abruptly. “I have essays that need marking.”

“Of course.” Dumbledore removes his hand from Remus’ wrist. “Please do let me know if there is anything I can do, Remus. Anything at all.”

Almost by accident, Remus catches his gaze again. There is another pause, another just-too-long moment of silence as their eyes hold each other.

Then Remus nods, and walks out the door. 


	2. Chapter 2

That night, Remus sits by the little fireplace in his little sitting room, staring into the flames and trying to come to terms with anything, even just one bit, of the things he has heard that day.

Sirius, and the Kiss. Rotting flesh and black hoods, a haze of despair, and a gaping open mouth. And Sirius’ mouth, which Remus knows so intimately.

No. He can’t think about that. He won’t.

He wrests his mind away, towards the other things Dumbledore told him. Gellert Grindelwald. The Darkest wizard before You-Know-Who—and the image floating above the Pensieve, two young men kissing.

Of course Remus is staggered, stunned, by the revelation that Albus Dumbledore was once in love with, and then dueled nearly to the death with, one of the most evil wizards of the twentieth century. He cannot quite swallow the parallels between him and Albus; they are so strong, so eerily similar. The betrayal and the blame. And the years—Merlin, it’s been so many years for Albus, nearly a century, and yet there was grief, still, etched in the lines of his face, when he spoke of his once-lover.

But Remus’ attention keeps straying away from Gellert Grindelwald and towards the peculiarly magnetic thought that is scratching at the inside of his brain. It is the simple fact that Dumbledore is queer that Remus finds most flustering, most fascinating. It is something that feels too enormous for Remus to grasp all at once. Because that means—what does that mean? It means that the impossibly brilliant, impossibly untouchable man is…touchable. Has been, in fact, touched. In his youth, men ran their hands through his auburn hair; in middle age, when he became a Hogwarts professor and headmaster, he—what? Slipped away to Hogsmeade, to rooms above the Hog’s Head? To men who undressed him, who kept quiet because they had to? Or did he go out into the Muggle world, both safer and more dangerous, because Muggles could not let slip to the Ministry that their Head of the Wizengamot was practicing sodomy in back rooms, but they could alert the Muggle police…? Though Muggle coppers would hardly be a match for Dumbledore. And when did he decide he wasn’t broken, wasn’t backwards and wrong? Surely, given the times he lived in, it must have been terribly hard—but maybe Dumbledore was always smart enough, special enough, to know better.

Now the question: does he still do it—meet strangers for sex? He is over a hundred years old. His face is webbed with wrinkles, his frame quite thin; yet he is fairly spry, despite his age, and has the energy—and the commanding presence—of someone much younger. _But what about his beard?_ Remus thinks suddenly, a giggle bubbling up inside him, and then, rather graphic images of bushy silver hair popping into his head, steers his thoughts hastily away.

Absurd to think that Dumbledore doesn’t have sex just because he’s old. Remus is embarrassed at having had that thought. But it isn’t just that, it isn’t just his age. It’s that he’s…he’s miles above everyone. He’s the kind of person Remus can’t imagine knowing intimately—really _knowing_ , seeing him vulnerable, or seeing him laughing so hard he can’t breathe. He thinks of the tears brimming in Albus’ eyes that afternoon, and how shocking it was to witness them.

And then Dumbledore’s final revelation. Remus still can’t quite believe he understood correctly, but there was nothing to misunderstand: Dumbledore told him that he had a lot of sex with anonymous men to try and distract himself from the pain of his lover’s betrayal.

Remus has not had sex since Sirius went to prison. He shut that part of him up tight and never wavered. Maybe he ought to have tried Dumbledore’s method instead.

Remus shifts in his chair, staring into the fire. Could he have done that? Snipped the thread tying him, still, to his love for Sirius Black and gone into the darkness of some club’s back rooms instead of the darkness of his shabby rented house? Buried his pain in some pretty boy’s body instead of carving it deeper and deeper into his own flesh?

No. He doesn’t think he could have. He wouldn’t have known how.

There are so many things Remus doesn’t know how to do. It’s astonishing, frankly, that he can do this much—that he can walk the halls of Hogwarts, and teach children to fight dark magic, and converse with the others in the staff room, and see Harry in the corridors, that shock of familiar black hair, without crumbling to bits.

Restless, he stands and paces the length of the little room. There is no window to peer out of; he is tucked in some odd crevice of the castle, down a private corridor off-limits to students that stretches about six feet before dead-ending in Remus’ rooms. The professors’ living quarters are scattered all over Hogwarts; Snape, he thinks, is in the dungeons somewhere, and Minerva McGonagall has mentioned her proximity to Gryffindor Tower. He hadn’t thought about it when he was a student, where they all lived. Hadn’t really thought about their lives at all. He had taken for granted their constant presence, their all-encompassing devotion to Hogwarts, their singleness as individuals (unattached to ties outside the school) and their collectiveness as a group (each other’s only company). Perhaps he had even though of it that way, just a little bit, when he accepted Dumbledore’s job offer. Perhaps some part of him had imagined the school as a sort of monastery: dedication and solitude and celibacy the service it required in exchange for shelter.

Do any of them have partners? Children? Not Minerva, not Poppy, not Flitwick, not Snape. Not Albus. He wonders about Pomona Sprout, about Aurora Sinistra, about Charity Burbage. Why doesn’t he know?

He paces again, one short path across the room. Back to the fireplace. Had he been aware of what solitude, what smallness, he was committing to when coming to teach here?

Yes, he tells himself. The world is not for him. He has known that, now, for a very long time.

Yet how did twelve years pass without anything, _anything_ , happening to him? After Sirius, he had thought, surely there could be no more life for him, not really—but Albus, after his tragedy, after—after Gellert Grindelwald—he had still—he had _touched_ things—

_You are not Albus Dumbledore_ , Remus reminds himself, but he feels hot and restless. He could have—could he have?

Suddenly there is a knock at the door.

Remus freezes, heart in his mouth. He knows. He knows who it is, though his mind is telling him scornfully not to be stupid. He walks the few paces to the entrance of his room. He opens the door.

“Remus.” Albus Dumbledore stands there, looking too tall for the cramped corridor. He wears soft brown robes that fall, as always, all the way to the floor. His silver beard reaches his waist, and his long hair is tied back in a loose ponytail. He wears no hat. His periwinkle eyes, looking at Remus from above his half-moon glasses, appear strangely hesitant.

“Hello,” he says. “I—perhaps it’s foolish. It’s just that after our conversation this afternoon, I—I wondered if I had said quite the right thing.”

Remus stares at him. The silence hangs between them for a long, drawn-out moment.

Maybe Remus did not do anything over the last twelve years, but he recognizes the invitation.

“You did,” he says abruptly, and steps back to open up the doorway. “Come in.”

Remus pours Albus a glass of wine. That seems to be the correct thing to do. He pours one for himself, and drinks half of it down in one swallow.

Albus sips his, resting the glass lightly in the cup of his long, long fingers.

Remus’ heart is oddly steady. The room, though, does seem smaller and hotter than it had before. He knows there are steps to take to get them from here to where they are going, but his body or his mind—some part of him, some hazy sense of consciousness—has not fully registered that they are actually about to be taken.

He steps closer to Albus.

The old man watches him for a long moment. Remus feels almost as if he is being scrutinized for his competency on some assignment: the yearning and anxiety whirling together in his stomach. Let him pass muster. Please.

But it is only almost like that. Because Albus’ eyes hold something else too. Something beyond cool intelligence and calm control—though those are there as well. There’s a spark, a sort of intentionality, in his gaze.

He places his wine glass on the small table and puts his hand on the side of Remus’ neck.

Something in Remus shakes loose, tumbling into his stomach. Albus’ hand is dry, like tissue paper. And warm. The skin of Remus’ neck where Albus cups his fingers grows hot immediately. He waits for a wave of heat to pass through his entire body, but it doesn’t. He stands still, looking, breathing.

Albus steps closer, not loosening his hold on Remus. They are closer, now, than they have ever stood. Closer than Remus has stood to anyone since October 31, 1981.

Dumbledore’s face is creased with innumerable lines, some barely visible, some etched so deep it is hard to imagine the skin there has ever been smooth. His beard brushes Remus’ front. His breath on Remus’ face is warm and just a little sour.

Nothing is happening. Remus surges forward and presses his mouth against Dumbledore’s, an off-kilter landing less like a kiss than Remus had hoped it would be. Albus does not gasp. His fingers tighten slightly at the back of Remus’ neck and he opens his mouth, repositioning them so their lips slide into place. Remus kisses him forcefully, pushing himself past the dull haze that’s stopping him from grasping what’s really happening, sliding close enough to the other man that his body has no choice but to go, _oh. Yes. Here we are._

The kiss breaks. Remus thinks he ought to be trembling, but he isn’t.

“Are you certain?” Albus asks softly.

“Yes,” Remus says, and swallows down the lump in his throat. “Come to bed.”

It feels like going through the steps more than it ever has before: Kiss, remove robes, kiss again (hands around the waist this time), hands pulling up his shirt, pulling it off ( _the scars_ , Remus thinks, but Dumbledore gives no indication that he notices them), hands on his chest, everything stopping awkwardly for shoes to come off, Albus’ robes placed over the foot of the bed—and then they are sitting next to each other in bare feet, and Remus’ blood is pounding in his ears.

Albus’ toenails are yellowed, but Remus’ are more ragged.

“Remus,” Albus says quietly, and Remus turns back to him, a sort of urgent panic clawing at his chest, and he kisses him again, hard, and—thank Merlin—Albus lets him do it. He seems to understand what Remus is asking for, and keeps kissing him while moving his hands to Remus’ trousers.

If he can just—be naked—and underneath Albus, and if he can keep kissing and touching and being touched, he will surely feel a flash of recognition, of revelation, _this is happening_ _to me_ , surely it will break over him suddenly like an egg cracked over his head, relief or desire or at least understanding—and Albus pulls off his pants and Remus’ cock is free but not hard. Albus’ stomach isn’t the concave curve Remus had been expecting, but a slight protrusion, always hidden before under sweeping robes. His chest sags slightly, not taut and hard like the persona Headmaster Dumbledore has always projected. And he has pushed his long beard behind his left shoulder.

His cock is hard, though. At least halfway.

There is no crack over Remus’ head, no shattering blow spinning his carefully-constructed facade of normalcy to bits. But it’s true that his pulse is elevated. It’s true that looking at Albus’ uncovered prick and balls—also wrinkled, also sagging slightly, but his length long and narrow—is doing something to him, something deep in his belly. It is hard to classify it as arousal, but there doesn’t seem to be a word that gets closer. The strangest thing is the absence of thoughts in Remus’ head. He notices it: he can’t really process, can’t narrate what is happening to himself, as he usually does. Even that observation slips away from him after a moment. Albus puts his hand on Remus’ thigh.

Remus looks at him.

Albus climbs up onto the bed, on all fours, ushering Remus onto his back and positioning himself on top. For a second Remus worries about slips and creaking old bones, but Albus is steady and strong. Remus lies below him, heart beating loud in his ears.

He feels something drip onto his leg. Albus’s cock is leaking. Albus wants this.

That’s enormously helpful, somehow, and Remus relaxes as Albus presses against him, mouth on his chest, neck, ear. The slide of his tongue makes Remus shiver. Albus’ body, close against his, a strange collection of looseness and tightness, fragility and strength, warms him. He slides his legs up along Albus’, naked knees and thighs pressing, rubbing, getting him going now. Ah. Arousal, clear, obvious. Albus is breathing heavily. He isn’t silent, which Remus had imagined him being in all those anonymous rooms early in the century. He allows his lungs and throat to do their work naturally, letting out breaths and grunts and sharp inhales. Remus is instinctively holding himself back. He doesn’t keep quiet on purpose, really, now or ever; he’s only ever made noise on purpose—has always decided when to allow a whimper or moan or scream. He can make a lot of noise, but only when he means to.

Albus reaches his fingers behind Remus, touching his crack. “Yes?” he murmurs.

Remus’s stomach flips over. “Yes,” he says, voice suddenly tight. The fact is that only Sirius Black has ever been inside him. All at once he wants very much for that not to be true anymore.

The desire gives him purpose and urgency. He scrambles to hike his legs up so that Albus can reach his hole. Albus takes his wand from the bedside table and mutters a charm; Remus goes abruptly wet and loose. He’s used to manual opening up, so the sudden sensation of his muscles relaxing is strange and startling. There is something good about the way it isn’t quite good, something he likes about the jarring unfamiliarity. He likes that Albus just went ahead and chose how to do it. He likes that he hadn’t had to choose, and that the sex feels, already, so different from any he has had before.

Dumbledore lines himself up and guides Remus’ legs around his waist. Remus holds them up as high as he can, wrapped around the old man’s torso, while the head of Albus’ cock breaches his hole.

Oh, it has been so long, and Remus is so tight.

Albus grunts and pushes deliberately, forcefully, inexorably in. Remus already feels the strain in his legs and back as he holds himself in position to be fucked. But the intrusion into his arsehole gets most of his attention. It has been so, so long.

Albus fucks him. Remus guesses that maybe he’d been able to thrust harder in his younger days but he is still intense and steady as he rocks back and forth. He rides Remus low, nose to nose, and Remus watches with a sort of bemused, distracted awe as Albus’ eyes squeeze shut with each forward jerk. He wonders—god, did he look like this all those years ago, focused and serious as he fucked and was fucked by those boys in secret back rooms? Did he recall Gellert Grindelwald’s cock as anonymous strangers thrust themselves inside him? Remus gasps, heat flaring in his belly at the thought. He imagines dark curtains and musty, perfumed air, brick and back alleys. Unfamiliar fingers and hard smiles. Albus’ breathing is getting faster. Remus is hearing what Grindelwald heard, what all those men heard, the sounds Albus had risked freedom and reputation for; and Albus, Albus can hear the same ragged breathing from Remus that Sirius Black had caused. _Teach me to get fucked again_ , Remus thinks intensely, the words coming from somewhere deep inside him though of course he still knows how, but he wants all those decades of shameful back-room anonymous sex, wants them to cover up the memories of his old life one shattering orgasm at a time. Albus is so much older and knows so much and sleeping with Remus means so, so much less to him than it does for Remus and Remus is terribly glad of that. Headmaster Albus Dumbledore has taken off his half-moon glasses and is fucking his hundredth or thousandth boy, and Remus wants it, wants it, wants it.

Albus comes with less fanfare than Remus, who arches his back and opens his mouth in a long silent O. He lies gasping on the bed as Albus pulls out of him.

There’s a moment when it might become awkward, but Dumbledore gives him a mild smile and hands Remus his clothes before replacing his own. They go out to the tiny sitting room without talking, and then look at each other.

“I should be going,” says Albus. “It’s late.”

Remus nods. Dumbledore turns towards the door. “Er,” says Remus. “I—had a good time.”

Albus gives him a rather gratified smile. “I’m glad to hear it.”

“I’d do it again.” Remus just manages to stop himself from blurting out, _If you wanted to. If I was good enough._

“Hm,” Dumbledore says. He surveys Remus with his pale blue eyes. “Perhaps.”

Remus nods again.

“Good night, Remus.”

“Good night, Pr—Albus.”

When Albus has gone, Remus leans back against the door with a huff, blinking around the room in a sort of disbelieving haze.

“Well,” he murmurs to himself. He can still feel where Dumbledore’s cock had been inside him. “Well.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> quick content warning for mentions of (magical) drug use.

As the term progresses, Remus has to work very hard not to focus too much on Harry Potter. The thirteen-year-old boy with impossible hair and impossible eyes is a constant reminder of what Remus had and lost, the unsuspecting deliverer of the occasional gut-punch when Remus glimpses him in the corridors unexpectedly and all at once thinks, with a soaring leap of his heart, _James_. He appears to Remus like a locked door, a chest full of secrets: the secret of James and Lily’s deaths, of the end of that terrible war, and even more, the embodiment of the last, best things Remus’ friends left behind. Remus knows that in truth it is he who is the guardian of precious things, if Harry only knew it—what he could tell Harry, the worlds he could open for him, the thousands of tiny memories of his parents’ days and months and years; but Harry does not know, and so Remus tries not to call on him too often in class, or watch him too closely when the boy isn’t looking. The wound that Harry would so eagerly, innocently rip open if Remus told him even the slightest bit about his time with James and Lily is one that is still so barely healed, still so pink and twisted, and Remus is afraid that if the blood were to rush out (the memories, the moments) it would be rotted and black. He can’t bear for Harry to see him infected, tainted, wrong; cannot tell him that he, of all of them, was for some cruel random reason the one to survive. He cannot, simply cannot, show him the places where his body is still mottled all over with Sirius Black’s fingerprints.

So Remus keeps quiet—though Harry looks too thin, and too troubled, and Remus burns to know _why_ —and instead turns his attention to his many, many other students.

They are all so _young_ : that is what strikes Remus most. Even the seventh-years, who think they are adults, wise and capable, which Remus and his friends thought too at that age, that they were ready to fight, to marry, to give birth, to die. But the faces of these teenagers are so smooth and unformed, still marked with spots and the unfortunate results of inexpert eyebrow-shaping charms, and they still lose house points for hexing each other’s bogeys. It is astonishing to remember himself and his friends at seventeen; although they had many more reasons to feel grown-up than this more fortunate generation, the truth is that they were still only children.

It is easier in some ways to handle the younger students, with their peculiar juvenile obsessions like flash photography or something called a Blibbering Humdinger, and the way their age more or less excuses their failures and foibles, their swings between pettiness and generosity. Remus is less uncomfortable remembering the hijinks of James and Sirius, and by extension himself and Peter, at the tender age of eleven or twelve, when it was the height of humor to transfigure a Slytherin’s quill into a worm or make their hair smell like poo. Now that he is older, he thinks back on some of the things they did in their later Hogwarts years—things he stayed silent about—with acute discomfort. It was true that Snape had been cruel, and underhanded, and a bigot; he had also been poor, and a misfit, and there was nothing righteous about making fun of his greasy hair. As a teacher it is so clear, the difference between someone like Snape and someone like Draco Malfoy, whose privilege and family money insulate him against insults and indignities. Snape never had that protection—not until he joined up with the Death Eaters.

Remus finds himself wishing James and Sirius had been more like Fred and George Weasley—that is, when he’s not wishing that Fred and George Weasley would Apparate somewhere far, far away and never give him a stress headache again. Their pranks invariably result in a lightning-fast roller coaster ride for Remus that leaves him with some serious whiplash: he moves very quickly from absolute delight at their cleverness and impertinence, through the uncomfortable realization that he is now a _professor_ and is responsible for disciplining them, to deep annoyance at having to deal with whatever disruption they’ve caused while still holding back a laugh. But the Weasley twins’ exploits, as rule-breaking and headache-inducing as they are, are never the least bit mean-spirited (except, once in awhile, towards Argus Filch, who still murmurs about the “good old days” of torturing students, so that seems fine). And their pranks are as ingenious as anything that he and his friends pulled off back in their day; there’s a singing teakettle that spouts high-pitched Shakespearean insults still flying around the sixth floor, uncatchable, that makes Remus want to give Fred and George Weasley an appreciative handshake and perhaps several hundred house points.

That said, all of his former teachers probably deserve a handwritten apology note and a pound of Honeydukes’ finest chocolate for putting up with him and his friends for all those years.

Sometimes when he’s determinedly not noticing Harry, he turns his attention to Ron Weasley and Hermione Granger, who are always flanking their friend, three small heads bending together in a tight triangle. He finds himself assessing them, measuring them up—would Ron take a month of detention for Harry, as Peter did for James after a nasty accident in Potions class that was entirely due to James’ inattentiveness with a vial of frogs’ eyes? Would Hermione stay up half the night coaching Harry through a tricky Charms assignment, as Remus did for Peter even though he had a History of Magic exam early the next morning? Would the two of them spend countless hours of research and planning and rule-breaking and dangerous experimentation to make the worst nights of Harry’s life not only bearable, but something to look forward to?

He rather thinks they would. He knows some of what they have already risked for Harry, after all.

They make a peculiar trio. The Weasleys are good people, Remus likes Arthur and Molly, but Ron was never amongst the most memorable of their children; in many ways he seems the least remarkable of the lot, next to the treasure hunter and dragon keeper and Head Boy and pranksters and even the youngest, who would stand out for being the only girl even if she didn’t display, as Remus has learned, a quiet competence at flying that has Minerva eyeing her for a spot on the Gryffindor Quidditch team as soon as she’s old enough. Ron’s grades are average, his work ethic is borderline, his self-esteem is clearly low; and yet he has not been relegated to Peter’s spot, the place of the eager friend-slash-hanger-on. Remus is curious about Harry’s choice of Ron as best friend, wondering if perhaps it is something about their worn shoes and their hesitation to take up space that draws them together. That is perhaps Harry’s biggest difference from James: he does not walk around as if he deserves his place in the world. It squeezes Remus deep in his chest to see it.

So he turns his attention to Hermione, then: undoubtedly brilliant, utterly determined, and yet the kind of rigid rule-follower that James and Sirius would never have tolerated in their closest circle. She wants too obviously to be liked, to be the best; Remus knows Sirius wanted this, too, for his own private reasons, but he spent his years at Hogwarts constructing a careful facade of devil-may-care mischievousness—and at times, a more self-sabotaging recklessness—to hide his need for approval and for love. Hermione raises her hand too fast and too often, speaks with a sort of prim authority that provokes covert eye rolls from her classmates, and most certainly deserves the labels of know-it-all and teacher’s pet. Remus doesn’t know enough about her to know why she acts this way; maybe it is enough to be a Muggle-born and a girl to feel the kind of insecurity that precipitates such behavior. And maybe that’s what she shares with Ron and Harry, different though they are—all three of them feel they must justify their existence, at Hogwarts and on earth.

And then he is back to Harry, whose existence at the age of fifteen months was already, in the eyes of the entire wizarding world, far more than justified. Yet Harry has grown up with no chip on his shoulder, not even the ordinary sense of privilege that plagued the wealthy and well-connected James. This would have made Remus wonder if Albus might not have been right after all, sending Harry to live with his Muggle relatives—would have, if there weren’t so much else missing from Harry that James had: his confidence, his laugh, his easy smile. When Remus thinks of Albus’ decision all those years ago—thinks of the one conversation he had with him about Harry’s future a couple of months after James and Lily’s deaths—he feels the tremble of some subterranean torrent of conflicting emotions, of pounding guilt and low thrumming anger and helpless loss and grief, that threatens to shake his very foundations. So he looks away from Harry again, and tries to forget.

Alone again in his rooms at night. He’d sat in the staff lounge for a little while after dinner, marking essays and chatting with Filius Flitwick, but after awhile the presence of other people had become oppressive and he’d returned to his tiny sitting room. It is only eight p.m. He is tired, but that is certainly too early for bed.

His thoughts drift to several nights ago, when Albus knocked on his door. Perhaps there is a part of him hoping he will return. A part of him that is waiting.

He closes his eyes and exhales, tipping his head back against the armchair. Its faded yellow-patterned fabric makes him think it might have once stood in the Hufflepuff common room. It is unevenly stuffed, lumpy in places and thin in others. Remus sighs again, placing his hands on his knees. Albus. Albus’ life. He wonders when the anonymous sex stopped—did it become too risky, or perhaps too depressing? What happened when Albus met Grindelwald again, when he faced off against him in the war? Did he relapse into his old habits of back rooms and bars? But he would have been older then, in his…sixties? Maybe there would have been fewer young men ready and willing, though surely Albus had been attractive even then. At that point it would have had to have been Muggles; no wizard wouldn’t have recognized the hero Albus Dumbledore.

Had there been a partner, ever? Someone long-term? How would that have worked, as the intolerant fifties gave way to the slightly freer sixties and seventies? Remus had known him then. Those years he was at school, was Albus with someone? It would have been impossible for Remus the child to imagine it, Headmaster Dumbledore romantically involved with someone, man or woman, but especially man. He tries to picture Albus and some unknown person setting up house together, curtains and carpets, a home Albus might return to on weekends or the summer holidays.

When did his colleagues find out? Surely Minerva knows his preference is for men, surely at some point there was at least a partial unveiling, a partial emergence. And the others? Sprout, Flitwick, Poppy Pomfrey? What about Hagrid? Filch? Snape? He feels a flicker of unease. It is 1993 and Remus does not know what is all right to say aloud, or to whom.

He doesn’t know if any of them are aware of his own proclivities. He and Sirius kept things private when they were at school—or at least they meant to. But it’s hard to say what a perceptive teacher might have observed.

Things might feel different if he had not spent the last twelve years celibate. There might be…more, somehow. More to say, more to reveal. More to hide.

The thought sends a little trickle of arousal up through his toes, warming his belly. He shifts slightly in the lumpy chair. Boys in back rooms. Knowing not his name, but his body. The narrow slot under his ribcage. The hairs on the backs of his hands. His taste, his smell.

He clenches, then unclenches, a flush of desire washing through him.

They wouldn’t have known what mattered most: they wouldn’t have known anything about him, not that he mutated into a slavering beast under the full moon, not that three of his closest friends had died in one fell swoop, not that he’d been in love with a spy and a traitor and a mass murderer. They’d have known one thing and one thing only: that he wanted cock. That, for once, a secret he held was one that was shared.

He fingers the top of his thigh, gently, through the fabric of his trousers.

The impression in his mind is one of dim lighting and dance floors. Clubs were more Sirius’ thing than his but he knows the stuffy hot air, the smell of breath and booze, the low grinding base pulsing through the body, almost painful in the way it sets the teeth on edge. The illicit pastilles and potions, slipped not so subtly from one sweaty hand to another, and the telltale blown pupils or dreamy gaze. Remus took one once (more because it was handed to him than because he wanted to) that made him see green glowing trails of light everywhere he looked. He’d found it disorienting, even a little bit panic-inducing, but now he remembers the way it had loosened all his limbs and imagines how that phosphorescence might have attached itself to cheekbones, and eyelashes, and wandering fingertips. How a naked sweat-streaked chest might have looked in the hazy hallucinogenic glow, and how Remus might have drawn a palm dreamily down from collarbone to waistline, sparking neon on skin, for once detached enough from his consciousness—floating above it like a balloon on a string—to tease his fingertips into the waistband of a stranger’s trousers, reveling in the heightened sensation of crisp hair corkscrewing out of the top of his pants.

He rubs his hand over his crotch, feeling arousal pooling liquid-hot deep inside.

The slick slide of lips, tasting like beer; the flash of an earring in one ear; the squeeze of strong fingers on his arse. Somebody grinding up behind him. Somebody’s hand in his hair, pulling hard.

Somebody’s hand in his, tugging him through the crowd. Graffitied loo or—or shadowy back alley, past couples grunting and thrusting in the darkness, a little privacy from a brick outcropping but still the music is pulsing low from the open back door of the club and there are moans and whispers ( _gonna fuck you so hard you’ll hurt for days)_ and—and—the taste of danger in the air, of risk—

—quiet, one ear cocked for sirens—

and in 1981 it had been over a decade since homosexuality was legalized in Britain, so Remus isn’t sure just what exactly that’s doing in his fantasy, but—

now there’s no music from inside the club, and there’s a rat scurrying past, and the man he’s with could be a copper, he won’t know for sure if it’s entrapment till the man’s got his hand down Remus’ pants, and if he has to use Confundus on a Muggle that brings its own risks, questions and scrutiny and—the man pushes against Remus and he’s hard as a rock and panting for it. Remus gasps.

The man runs eager fingers down Remus’ neck, hands desperate and fumbling. They’ve got past this hurdle together, this is real and both of them are—are fairies, queers, poofs, or—or at the very least they come here to get off, to escape—whatever it is they need to escape, and—and there’s an almost painful edge of relief to the way Remus responds to the man’s touch, both of them hiding something dark and fucked and twisted— _well, no_ , his brain says, and he says back, _yeah I obviously know but_ —something dirty and _wrong_ and that makes it hot and hurting when the man grabs his cock, unbuttoning his trousers and pulling down the front of his pants so he can get his hands on Remus’ purpled length and they both exhale, sharp.

 _The things he knows and the things he doesn’t_ , and as Remus, in his little sitting room, maneuvers his trousers open and takes himself in hand, he isn’t sure exactly what he means by that, _what this stranger knows and what he doesn’t—_ he knows the hard hidden wanting, doesn’t know the—the afternoon tea, no sugar, a splash of cream; doesn’t know the books and plants on the windowsill, doesn’t know the—the history, the jagged tears in his childhood, the—the twists of his—his mind—

And Remus in his little sitting room doesn’t know if in this scenario he’s Albus or himself, or if the man touching him is the young Dumbledore, but…there’s something about that genius, glittering, diamondlike, chilly and hidden like the chambers of a cave; something about that genius, unseen, _do you know who it is you’re touching,_ whose prick you’re kneeling down to put between your vodka-stained lips? Remus gasps; it’s unbearably erotic, fuck, _fuck_ , being touched by—by fingers that belong to that brain, by fingers that belong to that tragic enigmatic past, heart riddled with wounds borne half with dignity, half with restless resignation, and him still in his youth—when they would have been so raw, so new— _fuck._ The grief, god, the pain the brilliance the reckless abandon, strong strange fingers in his hair as he—sucks—sucks the cock of—of this man he does not know—

Remus grits his teeth, in his chair in his sitting room, keeping himself quiet.

Albus—fucking— _Dumbledore_ —

young and—and burning—

and Remus knows nothing, nothing at all, of the vast and hugely adult secrets he carries in his body or the starry unfathomable constellations of his impossible brain—

and both of them are just— _bodies_ —

and they hurt straight to their core as they gasp and come in arcs of green phosphorescence—

and Remus lets himself finish, catching his spunk in his hand, and breathing hard.


	4. Chapter 4

Remus watches Dumbledore in the Great Hall, wondering.

He has to watch covertly; he is a professor, and at the head table, and students can easily look over and see where his gaze is fixed. Besides, there is a reason, now, that Albus might notice him watching, and maybe even watch him back.

Remus does want that. Wants the headmaster’s assessing, coolly desiring gaze.

At the same time, he feels a peculiar pull, private, sharp; he wants to examine Albus Dumbledore’s face, each wrinkle, crease, and crow’s foot, wants to look at his knuckles and nails, his twinkling blue eyes, as if by drinking down these minor details he will be able to swim deeper into the century-wide chasm of the man’s past. All the hands that have touched his, in passion and anger and grief; all the tears and cries, the trembling hopes and the triumphs; what was he like at age eighteen? Sixty? Thirty-three? It is as though Dumbledore’s revelation about Grindelwald has revealed sweeping vistas of unknown information about Albus, has finally broken the spell that adheres to all teachers, even when their students are grown, the spell that wraps them in a scholarly cocoon and obscures the ways in which they are only humans: the fact that they fall in and out of love, that they cry at funerals and maybe during sex, that they lead entire lives, tragedies and comedies and everything in between, that their students will never see. When Remus was at Hogwarts as a student he knew what everyone knew, the brilliant discoveries, the twelve uses of dragon’s blood, the former position on the Wizengamot, the victory in the last wizarding war; but those were simply pieces of information printed on chocolate frog cards. He had not been able to understand that Albus might, for instance, have feared he would never live up to his potential, or that he had once had his heart broken, or that in his youth men had knelt between his legs and he had gritted his teeth and closed his eyes and lost himself and his grief for the space of ten or twelve minutes. Perhaps it is because Remus spent the last twelve years of his life shutting himself off to the world, but there is something about the hugeness, the staggering peaks and valleys, of Albus’ mostly-hidden life that sends a shiver, excited and erotic and a little fearful, through Remus every time he thinks of it.

It is astonishing, how much life is buried behind that calm and stoic frame.

He sneaks another glance at Albus over his pumpkin juice. As if sensing it, Albus’ periwinkle eyes slide to meet Remus’, and for a second, they meet each other’s gaze, suspended, silent.

Albus comes to him again that night.

Remus thinks, at first, that it is coincidence, or that Albus can sense somehow that Remus’ thoughts have been turning so intensely toward him recently. But then Albus says, “We used to do that, you know,” and Remus asks what he means, and Albus replies, “The look. Over the table, across the bar. On the train platform. We knew what it meant, when another man’s eyes met ours for just a little longer than they should.”

A slow flush begins to rise through Remus, starting deep in his belly. “You mean—in the Great Hall—?”

“Yes.” Albus tilts his head inquisitively, mild eyes examining Remus. “Was that what you intended when you looked at me?”

Remus opens his mouth. Had he meant to communicate his desire to Dumbledore through that brief mutual gaze? Had he been watching him hoping to catch his eye? Had his glance—had it been—Remus’ flush grows deeper—so obvious, so openly…(sexual? submissive? needy? lecherous?).

But a thrill of excitement is also jolting through his belly, because—because he hadn’t known he knew, hadn’t known he knew how to give such a glance, and Dumbledore has been doing it for a century, he and all the others like him, and where did Remus learn it? How had this secret signal found its way into the muscles of his body, a language he apparently knows like birds know migration paths before they have ever taken them? A glance, a single glance, and…

And Albus is here, ready to bed him.

Wordlessly, Remus begins to undress. “Take me again,” he says hoarsely. “Please.”

So Albus does. This time Remus puts himself on hands and knees and shows his hole to Dumbledore, who places his papery hands on Remus’ arsecheeks and parts them, looking, and Remus shivers and swallows hard, staring down at his pillow with half-glazed eyes.

He wants Albus to tell him if he did this with Gellert Grindelwald. If Grindelwald crouched above his slender trembling young lover and pushed his finger against Albus’ hole. Sirius used to eat Remus out for ages, getting outrageously wet and sloppy half to tease Remus, who had to wash his sheets a lot for a few years there. He has an almost vicious hope that Albus will do the same, will touch his tongue to that intimate spot, but Albus whispers a wandless spell and Remus’ hole fills with something slick and warm.

“Bend a little lower,” Albus murmurs, and Remus remembers his age, thinks perhaps he should have chosen a less strenuous position for the older man, and then as he sinks lower his own knees creak.

Albus mounts him, positioning Remus’ arse with his hands, adjusting his legs to straddle him, pressing his arms down on either side of Remus once he has lined up the head of his cock so Remus can feel it pushing against his hole. Sirius used to take him with no prep other than lube but that had been when they were regularly fucking and Remus is no longer so loose; Albus’ cock begins to press in and Remus gasps sharply with the discomfort of it. Albus slows but does not stop. Remus almost asks him to, almost pulls himself forward and away from the painful stretch, but instead he bites his lip hard and bears it; once his hole passes the threshold where it is trying to expel Albus and starts to suck him in, Remus lets out a gasp and feels arousal buzzing up his spine.

“I do know what I’m doing,” Albus says, sounding just a little amused.

_Yes, professor_ , Remus thinks, his internal voice insolent and smiling, and the unspoken words send a shock through him, a guilty, embarrassed, complicated wave of heat. He pushes back to slide Dumbledore’s prick farther inside him. The old man grunts, breath hot on the back of Remus’ bent neck.

He starts to thrust. Remus’ eyes flutter shut. His hole is still stretched wider than is comfortable, but each time Albus slides his lubed cock halfway out of Remus the slick burn of it makes Remus gasp into the pillow. Albus is almost methodical, his movements regular and even—as if fucking is a technical skill he has honed through many years of practice. Sweat breaks out on Remus’ chest and forehead and he squeezes his shut eyes tighter and tries to lose himself in the inexorable rhythm of it. He lets his cock hang hard and untouched between his legs.

After a few minutes, Albus’ thrusts grow slightly unsteady, and Remus thinks at first that he is about to come. Then he realizes Dumbledore’s arms are shaking minutely on either side of him, a sign that his endurance is wearing thin. No wonder, given his age. Sirius could go for ages like this, but Sirius was twenty-one and a bit mad and a fucking traitor besides, so it doesn’t matter, and Remus asks, “do you—need—”

“No,” says Albus, out of breath now. Remus lets him continue, finding his own arms beginning to ache and his back protest at the angle, and without really meaning to they sink lower and lower, Remus’ forearms digging into the bed and his knees slowly giving way till he is lying nearly flat, and Albus’ chest rests against his back as his legs scrabble to readjust, and they fuck awkwardly, almost spiderlike, Remus’ body shoved into the bed, head turned uncomfortably to one side so he can breathe. The pressure on his body is heavy, nearly stifling, and it pushes his cock against the mattress till he feels he might come without needing to touch it. Albus’s body begins to stiffen and he grasps the back of Remus’ head with one hand, pushing it into the pillow; then he fills Remus up with come as he grits out inarticulate noises.

“Forgive me,” he says breathlessly a moment later, “I’m afraid I need to—shift—” and he pulls out of Remus rather quickly and falls with a loud exhale onto his back, where Remus can see his muscles trembling. Remus gropes his way back onto his knees, hole smarting and protesting its sudden emptiness by spasming and dripping a thin hot thread of Albus’ come out onto the mattress. Remus reaches down between his legs.

“On my face,” says Albus, pulling at Remus’ arm with one still-shaking hand. “Come on.”

Remus blinks and opens his eyes wide, startled but following obediently as Albus leads him to a straddling position over his chest. Knees on either side, leaning for support against the head of the bed, Remus lets Albus put Remus’ own hand on his hard cock. “Come on,” Albus says again, “on my face,” and Remus, without really processing what he is doing, begins to stroke himself. Albus looks up at him, pale blue wrinkle-lined eyes fixed on Remus’ hand, expression almost solemn. Remus’ hand skips a beat as he feels his orgasm approaching, instincts telling him to move or to stop, but Albus squeezes his hips and Remus keeps going, letting the feeling build as he trains his cock right at Dumbledore’s face.

He spurts onto Albus’ cheeks and nose and half-parted lips. Albus lets in a sharp breath as he does, eyes slitted open just enough to watch Remus shudder and shake. There is something closed-off and satisfied in his expression once Remus is done, once Albus’ eyebrows and neck are streaked with his come. Remus, not understanding and yet feeling wildly, strangely moved, pushes his hands into his eyes and fumbles off of Albus, collapsing onto his stomach, aftershocks still wracking his body.

He has the impulse to say _I’m sorry_ but bites it back, Albus wanted it and Remus isn’t sorry besides; he feels a little out of control, breath heaving, and he feels somehow used, much more so than when Dumbledore’s cock was in him, as if—as if Remus is—a body, a young body, maneuvered to where Albus wanted him, the realization of a private fantasy, enacted—how many times? With how many boys?

Boys, boys, Remus is thirty-four and feels sixty years older, but compared to Albus—reminded, he looks over to see: his spunk is drying on Albus’ face. Albus isn’t wiping it off or charming it away. He is lying naked and flushed on Remus’ bed, slowly regaining his breath. One hand is spread on his chest, long spindly fingers somehow sensual, intimate, sitting atop the silvery patches of chest hair, fingertips resting lightly on his skin.

“It takes me a little longer to recover than in the old days,” Albus says, opening his shut eyes to look into Remus’. “I would very much appreciate the use of your shower, but feel free to occupy it first if you wish.”

“I’ll—” _wait_ , Remus almost says, but swallows it down. He feels half aroused again, looking at Dumbledore—Dumbledore, on _his bed_. Is it possible he has never known the man less well than in this moment?

“Thanks,” says Remus instead, and gets up. His shower is tiny and runs cool. He soaps up his genitals first, scrubbing his arsehole gently until it is empty and clean. Afterwards he wraps his lower half in a towel, embarrassed by his modesty, and steps back out into the bedroom. Albus, sitting now with his feet on the floor, still entirely naked and unwashed, nods his thanks and heads into the loo.

“I can see about warming charms for your water,” he says when he comes out again. “We ought to be able to fix that.”

Remus opens his mouth, then shuts it. “I…don’t think that’s your job.”

Albus smiles and lifts a shoulder. “Probably not, no.”

It isn’t until he’s gone that Remus considers: what would people think if Albus Dumbledore enquired about increasing the temperature of Remus’ private shower?

Remus learns more and more that Harry isn’t the kind of student James had been. He doesn’t laugh at the back of the classroom and wink at girls and coast on his natural smarts and Quidditch skills. He is small and wiry and intense, determined to master the tasks Remus has set for him, and not quick enough, in Remus’ estimation, to smile. He hesitates sometimes when he gets something wrong, a quiver like an internalized flinch barely perceptible to Remus. Remus has heard tell, of course, of Harry’s high spirits, his after-dark jaunts around the school, his spats with the young Malfoy boy and his astonishing talent on a broom. But Harry has faced Voldemort twice since he arrived at Hogwarts, this _child_ has nearly died, twice, in this place of supposed safety, and breaking the rules in order to save a friend or fight an enemy is so, so different from James’ and his friends’ late-night trips to the kitchen to be pampered by indulgent house elves. Perhaps Harry’s nighttime sojourns have been more like Remus’ own trips down the tunnel to the Shrieking Shack, dangerous and dark and impossible to avoid.

How terrible that of the four of them, Harry should remind Remus most of himself.

But he is far more determined than Remus, far braver, as Remus discovers when Harry asks him about the Boggart, asks him to teach him how to fight off Dementors. Remus has only ever hidden from what he fears, or struck some sort of unhappy bargain with it; Lily and James are both there in that moment, shining out their son’s stubborn, unblinking eyes.

Someday Remus is going to tell Harry that he bounced him on his knee when Harry was a baby, that Harry once threw up all over his favorite sweater. But those are memories Remus has spent years trying to forget, so for now he only agrees to Harry’s request, promising to teach him to protect himself from fear itself. He hopes that Harry has had enough happiness in his life to conjure a Patronus. He thinks of Ron and Hermione, and feels his chest relax slightly. That’s James all over: loyal to and half in love with his closest friends.

So much thinking. So much remembering. It’s in Harry’s face, in his eyes, in the halls of Hogwarts and this very classroom, where he once learned to cast the Stunning spell that would someday save his life, and where a cursed spider bit Peter and his whole leg swelled up. Perhaps if Remus had spent the last twelve years filling up his world with new people and new places the old ones wouldn’t haunt him so sharply now; but there is nothing, no one, he has cared about like he cared about his schoolfriends. Nothing that has given him as much joy, or as much pain.

He’s not sure he’s even capable of feeling pain or joy the way he used to be. Not anymore. Is that because of all that he has been through, or is it simply what happens when you grow up?

Sirius used to flirt with the Fat Lady. She loved him, his roguish winks, his gallant bows. She even let him in without the password once, when she was a little tipsy and he was five minutes past curfew and really putting on the charm. The idea that he would slash her portrait with a knife, ripping holes in her silly, genial face, is—well. It oughtn’t to shock Remus, not considering what else Sirius has done, but it does.

It’s the fact that it’s at Hogwarts. Sirius’ treachery, Remus has always blindly, desperately assumed, had not gone as far back as their days at school. He believes, because he has to, that Sirius only turned against them in that last year, maybe year and a half at most. Otherwise…Remus cannot handle _otherwise._

So the halls of Hogwarts, though haunted by his memories of Sirius, were still a place of safety; when he thinks of Sirius back then, he thinks, _who could have known what one day this boy would do?_ Sirius’ laughs, his kisses, his irrepressible flirtatiousness—those were real. They were sacred, even if one day they would be betrayed by Sirius himself.

Now Remus will pass the entrance to the Gryffindor common room and know that Sirius, the Sirius of now, the traitor, the killer, has been here, has left his mark, has despoiled the place where his young and innocent self still lives on in Remus’ memory. It is this, as much as anything else, that cuts Remus right to the heart when he hears the news.

On Dumbledore’s orders he gathers students from their dormitories and, along with a grim-faced Minerva, leads them in hushed and frightened groups to the Great Hall. All the while his heart is pounding, his consciousness only half-attentive as some portion of his brain floats, detached, not yet able to come to terms with the fact that he has been lying to himself all this time (of course he has) in believing that neither the Marauder’s Map nor Sirius’ Animagus ability were relevant to the present situation. A dog in a secret passageway: that is surely how he got in. That is how he got so very close to Harry.

It is time for a confession. He walks the scared students to the Great Hall, the secrets on his lips. The professors are congregating, speaking in hushed voices. He cannot pull Albus aside to speak to him alone yet. He is sent in a pair with Filius Flitwick to patrol the corridors for any errant students or evidence of Sirius’ presence. As they pace, solemn and silent, the secrets remain on Remus’ tongue, waiting. After an hour or two, they return to the Great Hall. Albus is absent, no doubt communicating with the Ministry. Remus sits up, keeping watch. At five a.m., Minerva tells him to take a shift sleeping. He lies awake, the secrets forming themselves into words. When dawn breaks, and the castle is clear, and the students rise with tired eyes for breakfast, Remus goes to the head table. Albus is there, surveying his charges, face impassive. Remus sits down, the secrets nestled behind his teeth. He eats breakfast. He looks at Albus. He leaves the table and then the Great Hall, swallowing the secrets down.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning for sex that--consensually, and as agreed upon in advance by both parties--makes it difficult for one participant to quickly tell the other if there's something happening that they don't like.

“Remus, may I have a word?”

Minerva’s voice is clipped as she stands in the doorway of the teacher’s lounge, where Remus is nursing a cooling cup of black tea and soldiering through a highly questionable essay on the ethics of the Imperius Curse. He has been trying to spend more time there and less in his cramped quarters, alone. But this is the problem: here, anyone can speak to him. In the best of times, being heralded in this way sends a tiny jolt of adrenaline through his body, which is still used to weeks without speaking to anyone but shopkeepers. Now, two days after the break-in on Halloween, his entire nervous system is on constant alert, certain that someone is going to come and accuse him of hiding information about Sirius Black.

He has barely slept since. The threat to Harry’s safety is like nausea made manifest, a lump in Remus’ stomach that rocks queasily like a ship at sea. Remus has at his fingertips two pieces of information that would likely get Sirius caught and allow Harry to rest easy at night. But, for reasons buried so deep he nearly blacks out when he tries to approach them, Remus cannot, _cannot_ open his mouth to tell Albus the truth.

“Of course,” he replies to Minerva, a split second too late. “What, er…what can I do for you?”

She purses her lips and looks in the direction of Sybill Trelawney, who is dozing with her mouth wide open in an easy chair nearby. “Let’s take a walk.”

It is impossible for Remus not to feel like an errant child as he follows her out the door. There is a very specific sensation he remembers from his days of rule-breaking at school, one part thrill and three parts guilty fear, that used to fill him up when facing the consequences of his actions. He doesn’t think any of his friends felt quite this particular way. They were secure in their place at Hogwarts, and had no immutable black mark against them that preexisted any mischief they might choose to cause.

“This will do,” Minerva says, ushering him into an empty classroom. She closes the door—Remus’ stomach drops—and then turns to survey him with a look he can’t read.

“I can’t say I expected to have this conversation with you,” she says, “though in some ways…”

Panic swarms up. Remus breathes in and out and keeps his expression mildly curious. “Yes?”

“I understand why you wouldn’t have said anything, but…” She sighs. Remus holds his breath. “Your…relationship with Albus.”

A long blank. Then: “Ah.”

Sometimes it’s astonishing to Remus how composed he can manage to sound when inside, he is losing his grip.

“Yes,” says Minerva. “Ah.”

Remus swallows. His pulse is racing. He doesn’t suppose Minerva of all people would disapprove of him being queer—and if she already knows about Dumbledore—

“What, er…?”

“Well,” she says, and folds her arms. He waits for disapproval, for censure. “You must be aware of the complications of intimacy within professional relationships.”

Remus stares at her.

“He is your employer,” she says. “He is in charge of decisions about your job, your salary, even your professional reputation. And in your case, well…it’s even more than that, isn’t it?”

She looks at him, not unkindly, over her spectacles. Remus swallows.

“The former student thing, or the werewolf thing?” he asks, offering her a wry if tentative smile.

“I was thinking of the latter,” she says, “although the former is…not irrelevant.”

“We aren’t—” Remus stops. “It’s not like we’re…”

Minerva holds up her hand. “You don’t need to go into detail. Suffice it to say that any sort of intimacy between you potentially complicates the employee-employer relationship. Of course I don’t believe Albus would do anything to harm you or your reputation, should anything go amiss, but that doesn’t mean his decision making, or yours, wouldn’t be affected. I have found, you know, that men are less likely to be aware of this than women,” she adds as she takes in his expression, which is presumably one of surprise, though he is not entirely sure what his face is doing.

“I…I suppose that’s true,” he says slowly. “But…”

She raises an eyebrow.

“I don’t mind.”

Minerva sighs. “Remus, I do not think we have time to unpack that extremely questionable statement you just made, but let’s assume that, as Deputy Headmistress, I _do_ mind.”

Remus swallows down the complex wave of emotions that rise in his throat at the first half of her statement and focuses in on the second. Rather to his surprise, he feels quite a pang at the thought of giving up…well, whatever is going on with Dumbledore.

“I’ve already spoken to Albus, and he’s agreed to transfer all decisions regarding salary, continued employment, evaluations, future references, et cetera, to me. I shall, in all official ways, be your direct supervisor now. Of course he remains the primary authority in the school, but if you ever feel in any way compromised by something he is asking of you, you will report to me and I will mediate.”

Remus sits down at one of the empty desks. He does not feel that it would be quite fair, after all this, to expect himself to continue standing. He looks at Minerva, who is waiting expectantly for his reply, and wonders suddenly if she has known about him—if she has known about him and Sirius, too—all this time.

“All right,” he says. “I don’t think it will be necessary, but…if you both think it’s best…”

She nods. “Good.”

There is a brief pause. She hovers by the door, and then, instead of leaving, sits on a desk near Remus.

“Are you all right?” she asks gently.

Remus swallows. “I’m fine,” he says.

“Mm.” Minerva hesitates. “I am sorry if I sprang this on you. Albus mentioned something, several days, ago, in passing, and—I’m afraid I rather gave him an earful once I understood the situation. He and I…well. I remember decades ago, when he used to tell me about little domestic squabbles with Elphias, and—I do forget at times that there are still reasons not everyone is open about their preferences. I ought to have let you tell me, perhaps, but I needed to address the situation, and…”

_Domestic squabbles with Elphias_. Remus files that for later and then confronts the fact that Minerva McGonagall is apologizing to him. “It’s all right,” he says, which may or may not be true. He has kept things private for so long. But if Dumbledore knew about him and Sirius, back when they were at Hogwarts, of course she would have as well. He swallows, insides squirming.

She reaches out and squeezes his wrist. It’s an extremely McGonagall sort of squeeze, brief, brisk, almost perfunctory. But there is warmth in it, too.

“These must be strange times for you, Remus,” she says. “You and Albus, I’m not at all sure it’s wise, but…” She shakes her head. “I don’t know. I worry you’re alone.”

It is this, more than anything else she has said so far, that shocks Remus the most. It is this, more than anything, that makes him feel alienated from his younger self. If Albus Dumbledore had been a professorial cipher to him while at Hogwarts, McGonagall had perhaps been even more so. They used to joke about how she probably slept in her office. He has known for a long time that she cares for her students, but he never imagined her allowing him to witness that so openly, to show him the concern in her eyes.

His own eyes fill briefly with tears. He blinks them away. It hurts to have one’s loneliness pointed out. At the same time, he is immeasurably touched by her attention. He does not deserve it.

“Forgive me,” she says, gently again. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

He shakes his head. “Please don’t worry about it,” he replies hoarsely.

She nods. “Come to me if you need anything, professionally or otherwise,” she says. “I am your boss, now, after all.” She smiles at him, then stands and heads out of the classroom. Remus sits at the desk, staring at the smudged chalkboard, biting his lip.

On the morning of the full moon, Snape comes to his office to ask if he has taken the Wolfsbane Potion. Because last month’s full moon was so early in his tenure at Hogwarts, he had not yet received the potion from Snape, so this is his first time using it. He’d woke up feeling strange and lightheaded, filled more with dread than hope. Most of him believes it cannot possibly work. He skips breakfast and sits in his office staring at the little bottle of brown liquid. He is still staring at it when Snape knocks and enters.

“It won’t have an effect unless you ingest it,” he says waspishly.

“I…” Remus breathes in, suppressing his knee-jerk irritation. “Yes, I know. Do you need something?”

“I wanted to make sure you remembered to take it.”

Remus stares at him, incredulous. He cannot fathom a world in which he would have forgotten about the potentially life-changing vial in front of him. “Not much chance of that.”

“Well, then.” Snape nods at the bottle.

“I thought I could wait until tonight.”

“Yes,” says Snape. “But as it is the first time, I would like to determine whether there are any ill effects well enough in advance to treat them before your transformation.”

“I…” Remus is unaccountably annoyed. He doesn’t want to drink it in front of Snape. He wants to—he wants to do it under his own steam, for the first time, for it to—to feel like something, something important. Snape’s brows are furrowed, his lip twisted in impatience. He brewed this potion for Remus. So Remus picks it up and uncorks it. It smells quite foul. As if he is not balancing on the edge of some great unknown future, he puts it to his lips and drinks. He can’t help the expression of distaste that crosses his face as he swallows it down. He wonders if it is meant to taste this bad, or if Snape somehow made it worse just for him.

He sets the empty bottle on the desk, pulse racing.

Snape watches him for a moment, then says, “How do you feel?”

Remus shrugs. “No different.”

“Hm.”

A pause. “Is that…how it’s supposed to be?” he asks.

“It’s all new information,” Snape says abruptly. “For obvious reasons, I’ve never been able to test its effects on an actual werewolf.”

He bites out the last word and Remus holds back a flinch. “Well,” he says, standing, “I’ll be sure to tell you if anything goes wrong.” He begins to gather up his books for his first class.

“The thing is,” Snape says, lip curling, “it’s rather a risk, this new potion. We don’t know whether it will have any effects before the moon rises. Even if it does work then, before that, it could do any number of things. Put you to sleep. Make you dizzy. Increase any tendency toward violence.”

Remus looks at him. Is he telling the truth, or being an arsehole?

“I’ve told Professor Dumbledore that I’d prefer you be monitored today,” Snape says. “At the very least, that you remain in your own rooms and report anything out of the ordinary.”

Albus hasn’t said anything to Remus about that, not that they’ve talked one-on-one recently. “But I have classes today.”

“I’ll be taking them for you,” Snape says. He lifts his leather bag, which Remus sees now is bulging with books. “Can’t be too careful. You should know that.”

“Excuse me?” says Remus, bristling.

“I will take your classes tomorrow as well. You will need the day to recover, after all.” Snape puts his bag down on the desk with a thud, narrowly missing the empty bottle.

“I have lessons already planned.”

“Don’t worry about that. It’s all taken care of.”

“I’m sorry, but this is extremely last minute. I have already arranged for Madame Pince to sit in on tomorrow’s classes, and I am perfectly capable of teaching today—”

“Are you?” Snape asks softly. “Do you know that for sure?”

Remus stops abruptly. His eyes flicker towards the now-empty vial. There is an extremely potent potion making its way through his body, and Snape is quite right: there is no way to know what effect it may have on him. It doesn’t seem likely that he will be a risk to anyone before moonrise, but…Unease settles in his stomach. He thinks of his students, fresh-faced, young, and remembers with a pang that he is always, always a danger to them.

He nods, not meeting Snape’s eyes. “Fine. I will remain in my rooms for the day.”

“And report to me tomorrow. I want a full account of what happens.”

“As you have already pointed out,” Remus replies quietly, “I will not be at full capacity tomorrow. You may come see me in the hospital wing, or I will come to your office on Saturday.”

He picks up his briefcase and, with a prickle of shame, heads toward the door.

“Lupin,” Snape says. Reluctantly, Remus turns back. Snape has an odd expression on his face. “If all goes as it should, you will not be in the hospital wing tomorrow.”

Remus stares at him, forgetting for the moment how to speak.

“But the Wolfsbane will make you very tired. Saturday will be fine.” Snape begins extracting books from his bag, the conversation clearly over.

Remus hesitates, feeling as though something more ought to be said, then goes.

On Monday, Remus returns to teaching with a body that feels almost entirely normal.

Not still aching from a pulled muscle or a concealed bruise. Not tingling with the itchy aftereffects of Skele-grow. Not with a still-stinging bite or claw mark. Normal.

He spent Friday in a haze, sleeping off the rest of the Wolfsbane in his room after finding himself on the bed in the Shrieking Shack when the sun rose, unharmed, unmarked. He spent the rest of the weekend on the brink of tears, wondering why he felt so strange and helpless. If there is going to be joy or relief, it is yet to come; Remus is still stunned and wobbly. That, he thinks, makes up half the reason he still looks as if he had been ill; it’s shock, as much as exhaustion, that is sagging the skin below his eyes and fading his cheeks. He is not yet back on solid ground.

When the third-years inform him that Snape assigned them an essay on werewolves during his time substituting, Remus goes very still and very cold. After the students leave, he sits at his desk, head in his hands. Is this Snape’s revenge for Dumbledore forcing him to make the Wolfsbane? A way to make it clear to Remus where they really stand? The begrudging gratitude he has been feeling towards Snape twists and sours. If any of his students were to realize…

Yet for the first time in his life, it is just possible that if he were to be found out, he might— _might_ —not lose his job.

And that is also because of Snape.

He rubs the faded white nub of a scar on his right wrist, brow furrowed.

_Come to my office tonight, please, if you are free. I’d like to hear about last Thursday. -AD_

The note is on Remus’ desk after his final lesson of the day. He wonders if there is any subtext to the message, or if Albus really just wants to know more about how the Wolfsbane worked. Remus is sure Snape filled him in, but it’s possible he’d like to hear it from Remus himself. It’s also possible that he wants something else.

How often has Dumbledore had sex readily available at Hogwarts? Has he done this before with another member of staff? Remus wonders this with a jolt first of disappointment and then illicit excitement; but then he thinks that Minerva would have reacted differently if Dumbledore made a habit of this. But he hasn’t forgotten her mention of “domestics with Elphias,” whom Remus later identified with a little frisson of revelation as Elphias Doge, an Order of the Phoenix member with whom Remus never worked closely but who appears in his memory as a rather portly, unremarkable man with gray hair and a funny little cap. The fact that he was apparently sleeping with Dumbledore at some point—no, not sleeping with; partnered, maybe even living together, judging by Minerva’s choice of words—has shaken Remus’s image of the forgettable Doge right down to its roots. How long were they together? When did they meet, and how did they know? Why did they separate, and when? Remus assumes they separated; Minerva spoke about it as if the affair were well in the past. But he supposes he doesn’t know. He doesn’t know anything.

He thinks about Albus’ mysterious sexual history instead of the fact that this meeting will be the first time he’ll be alone with him since Sirius’ break-in. He thinks about Elphias Doge—did they live together? At Hogwarts, or somewhere else? Was Dumbledore powerful enough that he’d have withstood the scandal if it were found out, or would he have been removed from any job involving children? Remus veers away from that last thought, instead imagining rooms with the curtains drawn and tea on the hob, Albus relaxing in his stocking feet, for once entirely at ease. He thinks of this all the way to Albus’ office, feeling just on the edge of arousal. Albus welcomes him in with a small smile and a bowl of sherbet lemons; Remus puts one into his mouth just to have something to do. They sit.

“So,” Albus says. “The Wolfsbane works.”

Remus nods.

“That is…remarkable. To say the least.”

He looks at Remus, the weight of his gaze making it evident that he understands precisely how earth-shattering this must be for Remus. Remus hollows out the side of his cheek and stores the sherbet lemon there for a moment. “Well. Yes,” he says.

Albus surveys him for a moment. “Did you notice any side effects?”

Remus sucks on the candy again. He shakes his head. “I was tired afterwards, but it felt like a…healthier kind of tiredness than usual. Like the aftereffects of a Sleeping Draught.”

Dumbledore nods. “Severus was pleased.”

Remus doesn’t reply. He thinks of Harry, James’ son, reading about werewolves because Severus Snape wanted to out him. What would Harry think of Remus if he knew?

“This must be the first full moon that was not entirely awful for you,” Albus says quietly.

Remus shifts, uncomfortable now. “I’ve never had a transformation be that easy and that painless,” he says honestly, pushing down half-coherent memories of wild nights loping through the woods, stag and rat and dog beside him. The sherbet lemon is tiny now. Remus crunches down, the sweet center dissolving under his teeth.

“We don’t have to discuss it,” Albus says gently. “But let me say I am very glad indeed.”

Remus nods. No words materialize, however, and Albus taps his long fingers on the table.

“One last thing,” he says. “And then I will leave you in peace. Do you feel that you need protection, after the break-in at Halloween?”

Remus stares at him. “Protection?”

“I have put in place several charms meant to keep Harry from harm, should Sirius Black ever get into the castle again. That does not seem likely, but then again, I did not suppose it likely the first time. Do you believe he might go after you as well if he returns?”

Nausea slams through Remus. Somehow—somehow he hadn’t made that leap yet. But Sirius betrayed James and Lily; he killed Peter. It is possible, entirely possible, that had Remus not been away on a mission for the Order that day that he, too, would be dead. And now?

“I…don’t think so,” he says slowly. “I…” The truth is, he doesn’t want protection charms. He doesn’t deserve protection charms. If he is not going to tell what he knows, he should take the risk. “No. I don’t.”

Albus gives him an assessing look, but inclines his head silently. Remus sits for another long moment, the sweetness left over from the candy turning stale in his mouth. He waits for Albus to do something, to say something, to indicate that this is going to turn into another kind of meeting altogether; but maybe Albus doesn’t want that.

“Can we—” Remus starts, then breaks off, unable to finish the sentence.

“Would you like to?”

Remus swallows. He nods.

“Then yes. Yes, we can.” Albus stands. “Come this way, if you don’t mind. My bones would not thank me if I forewent a bed when a bed was available.”

He walks over to a painting on the wall, a little gold-framed image of a country cottage, which might have been mistaken for a Constable had the chickens in the yard not been pecking at their feed. Albus touches his finger gently to the cottage’s tiny green door. Remus watches, heart in his mouth, as slowly the painting grows bigger and bigger. Eventually it takes up half the wall, so that the green door is now about four feet high.

Dumbledore pushes on the painting. The cottage door opens. He ducks his head and stoops to enter. “Come in.”

Remus steps into a charming, if eccentrically decorated, cottage. The walls of the front hall are covered in wallpaper patterned with what appear to be winged radishes, and the places where ceiling lights ought to be are occupied by gently glowing golden orbs. Albus leads him through the sitting room, which is full of plush sofas and armchairs reminiscent of Remus’ gran’s old house, and into a cozy little bedroom. It is small in a very different way from Remus’ rooms; its size feels meant to comfort the inhabitant, and its walls are hung with cheerful tapestries. One of them bears the image of a mooncalf prancing in a field.

He’d never have pictured all this as Dumbledore’s sense of style: the whimsy, perhaps, but the copper basin, the patchwork quilt, the vase of dried flowers? What draws Albus to this cluttered rustic aesthetic? But maybe this is simply how the headmaster’s quarters have always looked, and this is the accumulation of various professors’ quirks and preferences. Surely not, though, Remus thinks; surely behind all these charms are the high stone walls of Hogwarts and a much more traditional suite of rooms. Dumbledore has lived here for decades: he could have chosen a canopy bed, a mahogany table, a—set of gold candlesticks, or—but Remus doesn’t know that’s what he would have wanted, doesn’t know anything other than what Albus’ office looks like, and surely that, he now realizes, is a public display as much as it is an indication of Dumbledore’s actual tastes. The whirring magical instruments, the airy sense of space, the towering bookshelves and stately portraits: all of those are what Albus wants the world to see.

Is this the inner Albus that Remus is seeing now? Did he choose that lamp with the tasseled shade, or did he inherit it from some former head of school?

“Not what you imagined?” Albus asks him, startling him out of his reverie. He realizes he is staring around the bedroom, drinking it all in. Quickly, he turns his eyes back to Dumbledore.

“I don’t know what I imagined,” he admits.

Albus smiles. “Sit. I have something I think you might like.”

Remus perches on the bed, watching as Albus reaches into a big wooden wardrobe. He withdraws a little blue box, which he places on the bed. Inside are six or seven little vials, each filled with different amounts of variously colored liquids.

“I concocted these myself. Well, all except this one,” he says, touching a vial of poppy-red liquid, “which I was given by a rather clever friend.”

He looks at Remus expectantly. Remus hesitates. Is he supposed to know what they are?

“Er,” he says. “What do they do?”

Brief surprise crosses Albus’ face, followed by a momentarily thoughtful look. Then he smiles.

“This one increases sensation throughout the body,” he says, tapping on the farthest left vial, filled halfway with a dark purple concoction. “And this one here prolongs arousal.”

Remus flushes deeply as soon as he understands. Suddenly a little breathless, he says, “And the others?”

“My friend had the excellent idea to brew a potion that allowed the user to view themselves as if from above,” he says, nodding at the red potion with twinkling eyes. Remus inhales sharply. “Inability to orgasm until the potion wears off,” he says, pointing to a nearly empty vial of bluish liquid, and then to the next one: “fuzzy mind, heavy limbs, and impeded ability to react quickly to stimuli; and this last one replaces the sensation of pleasure with that of pain, and vice versa.”

Remus is hot all over, except the top of his head, which feels like ice. He stares at the little vials. He did on occasion, in the years after Hogwarts, take hallucinogenic potions, but he has never used one specifically meant for sex.

“Naturally, we do not have to use them if you would prefer not to,” Dumbledore says lightly.

“I…” Remus swallows. “I’d like to.”

“Which one?”

Remus looks at them all, snug in their velvet casings. After a moment’s hesitation—not because he doesn’t know what he wants, but because he feels peculiarly exposed admitting it—he points. “That one.” It is a deep smoky gray. It is the second-to-last one Albus mentioned: fuzzy mind, heavy limbs. Delayed reactions.

“You would like to be the one to take it?”

“Oh. Yes.”

Dumbledore inclines his head. He picks up the vial and looks inside. It is about half full. “Now, this is, of all the options here, the one that makes it most difficult to change one’s mind after things have begun.” He taps the side, sending the liquid roiling in cloudy spirals. “It is intended to deprive the user of the capacity to take charge of the situation, or to make many choices at all. It is also intended to make it difficult for the user to resist what is being done to them. If there is something I am doing that you do not like, it will take a great deal of effort, and a certain amount of time, to communicate that to me.”

He looks at Remus over his half-moon glasses, waiting.

Remus’ stomach flips. Cheeks warm, he nods. “I understand.”

“Is there anything you would like to tell me before you take it?”

“I…don’t think so,” he says slowly. “Unless…unless you’re planning anything, erm…”

Albus shakes his head. “I’m not familiar enough with your preferences to do anything extreme, Remus. Do you feel all right about being held down? Manhandled a bit? If there is anything that makes you feel claustrophobic, or too out of control, please let me know.”

“Oh,” Remus say quickly. “No. Nothing like that.”

“Very well.” Albus hands him the vial. It is very light. “Take a small sip. It will last about half an hour. You can take more later, if you want.”

Remus holds the bottle and looks at it, a peculiar sensation of deja vu running through him like a shiver. The last time he took a strange potion, it was the Wolfsbane.

“Should I take off my clothes first?” he asks.

“No. That won’t be necessary.”

Dumbledore is watching him. Mild as his expression is, that small hungry spark is back in his eyes.

Remus unstoppers the vial and puts it to his lips. The potion tastes smoky and slightly reminiscent of well-aged cognac.

He swallows. He waits.

The first thing that happens is a loosening of his limbs. He hadn’t realized how much tension he was holding in them, how tight his muscles have been. Dumbledore is watching him, and Remus thinks the effect is strong enough that he can probably see Remus’ shoulders relax and his torso slump slightly as the potion begins to kick in. Remus looks down at his fingers and wiggles them. It takes a moment for them to do what his brain says.

“This is…” he begins, but the rest of the sentence doesn’t come.

“Take off your clothes now,” Albus says softly. Remus moves to comply. Or rather, he thinks he does; he pictures his hands going to the buttons of his shirt, but after a moment he realizes they are still hanging at his sides. With a great effort, he picks them up. He brings them to his collar. He blinks hazily. What was…oh yes. The button. But he makes no further movement.

“Good,” says Albus. “It’s working.”

“Will…” _Will this get more intense,_ Remus thinks, but the delay between his thoughts and his mouth is too long, and the words never come.

“Hush,” says Albus. He takes Remus’ hands and places them on either side of Remus’ legs. “I’ll take over now.”

Sometimes when Remus is very sleepy, usually in the early morning, he drifts in and out of consciousness, never quite losing the intention to get out of bed. He will think, in fact, that he is doing it—that he is sitting up, pushing the covers back, sliding his legs to the floor. And then his mind will wander, and with a small start he will wake himself up again realizing that he has not moved at all. And then the process will begin again.

This is like that. By the time he becomes aware that he has not actually lifted his arms to allow Albus to remove his shirt, Albus has raised them for him and deftly extricated them from his sleeves. He thinks perhaps he might manage a shoelace, and slowly, slowly bends to reach for one; but Albus shakes his head and raises him back to an upright position, then points his wand at Remus’ feet and his shoelaces unravel, and then his shoes tug themselves off his feet, followed by his socks. Through a combination of magic and manual effort, Albus has Remus undressed and lying back on the bed soon enough.

His limbs _are_ heavy. They sink into the mattress in that deliciously warm, sleepy way that usually only comes after a healthy amount of physical exertion. Albus runs a finger along his sternum and arousal blooms through him, vague and diffuse.

His head lolls back. His eyes flutter shut as Albus’ hand caresses his ribs and his stomach, as he rubs one nipple and then the other between his fingertips. _That feels good_ , he thinks of saying, but his mouth stays closed. _What is this like?_ he wonders hazily, searching for the words to describe it as Albus’ touch does good but peculiar things to his body. He feels warm all over, heat pooling in his groin. Sometimes the light contact Albus’ hand makes with his skin sends a little shiver down his spine, and sometimes it lulls him deeper into this strange twilight world, halfway between sleep and waking. Albus cups his foot in his hand, sliding his palm along Remus’ arch, lingering between each toe; Remus’ head tips from side to side, slowly, the only reaction he’s really capable of making to the slightly ticklish sensation. Albus, who is still wearing his robes, lifts Remus’ left foot and bends his head slightly, then sucks Remus’ big toe into his mouth. That makes Remus’ eyes open, slow as if heavy with sleep: with a squirmy sort of worry he wants to tell Albus that he doesn’t need to do that, surely Remus’ feet are unclean and probably smell, but he has to take several breaths before the words come.

“It’s…okay…if…”

Albus’ eyes rise to meet his. He pauses.

“Do you dislike this?” he asks, still cupping Remus’ foot, his beard brushing against him.

Remus swallows hard. The skin of his foot has never felt so strange—almost too sensitive, and yet the way Dumbledore is cradling his foot feels…good.

“N—no,” he says with an effort, “but…you…”

Albus returns to sucking on Remus’ toe. Remus exhales, fights for a moment to retain his focus, then gives up, slipping back into that floating, suspended state.

It feels like when he would swim in the pond during summer visits to James, and he would lie on his back just under the surface and open his eyes, seeing through the sun-streaked water the bright blue sky. James…with his sopping black hair, grinning, shaking himself off like a dog as he emerged from the water. Dirt on his feet, nose going pink with sun…and on that old Snitch-patterned beach towel, Sirius spread out like a Hollywood diva, one knee up and the other leg stretched out, arms open, palms up on the grass, James’ mum’s pink sunglasses perched on his nose, a trail of dark hair leading from his belly button down into the depths of the Hawaiian-print swim trunks he’d picked up at some Muggle pier. Sirius in the water, sneaking a grasp at Remus’ arse when the others weren’t looking, and Remus’ cock stiffening and he couldn’t come out till he’d got it under control…

Swimming up through these visions he remembers that he is in Albus’ bed, and realizes his cock is growing hard because at some point Albus started stroking it. A panicky bloom unfurls rapidly in his mind— _not Sirius, no don’t think of Sirius_ —and his body jerks a little. Albus grips his cock tighter, as if Remus had been responding to his touch, and Sirius’ hand makes an appearance in his body’s memory, the way he would suddenly put a hand on Remus’ crotch and tug, and _no not Sirius_ ; Remus’ pulse jumps, he can’t keep hold of his thoughts, can’t section them off, he doesn’t want to think of Sirius’ hands on his. He tries to say something, but he can’t string the words together. Albus keeps stroking him, and Remus’ arousal is building despite himself, his body responding to the touch whether he likes it or not.

He closes his eyes and tingling waves crash slowly through him. There is nothing he can do, really, to stop Albus; or not without great effort, anyway, and…the awareness of Albus’ steady movement, the persistent slide of his hand…Remus sinks into it, even though part of his mind still wants to run away.

It goes on and on. The sensation builds until, after some uncertain amount of time, it seems to plateau, and Remus is no longer getting any closer to coming. Somewhere in his consciousness there is frustration about this, but it’s oddly distant and hard to hold onto. He’s floating, detached, and it takes a little while for him to register that Albus’ hand has moved, that he is now fingering Remus’ balls and every once in awhile pressing at his hole.

“So pliant,” Albus says, his voice coming from very far off, as if from sleep.

Remus stretches out his legs just a bit further, pressing his heels into the mattress. Albus’ long fingers are still stroking at him, reaching under and behind.

“Time to shift,” Albus says, and gently lifts Remus’ legs and positions them so his feet are flat on the bed, knees pointed toward the ceiling. Remus feels cool air on his hole. He thinks maybe Albus reaches for something—for a moment, he is no longer being touched—and then Albus’ fingers return to his hole, warm and wet.

Remus doesn’t entirely clock the moment when they enter him. If there’s much of a stretch, or any discomfort, he’s too deep under to notice it. He can’t really differentiate between Dumbledore’s fingers on the rim of his hole or just inside, and he can’t work out whether he’s using one finger or two. It doesn’t matter. The slide and press feel like a swirling, spread-out blanket of pleasure. He thinks a moan escapes from his lips, possibly. There’s a sort of static in his ears as slowly, methodically, inexorably, he is penetrated.

Albus’ fingers nudge and press experimentally, so slick with lube they make a slight squelching sound. They pet and push, and then find their target.

A starburst, a firework: a pulse of light and then the falling sparks, cascading down in that willow-tree shape they make, tiny strings of sensation that gently fizzle out.

Albus presses down again.

Remus can almost feel his prostate physically twinge. More light, more sparks. And then again. Remus struggles to breathe. Albus pulls out slightly, playing with his hole, then slides back in, landing his fingertips right on that spot.

Remus’ body begins to protest quietly as Albus strokes his prostate again and again. The sensation grows intense and not entirely pleasant, breaking up his hazy sleepiness with little uncomfortable jolts. Certainly Albus’ fingers are doing their job; his cock is hard, his arsehole squeezing to keep Albus inside. But were Remus able to give voice to his thoughts more readily, he would say it was too much. His eyes flutter open again; Albus is looking down at him, a kind of closed-off concentration on his face. Their eyes meet. The possibility floats through Remus’ disjointed mind that Albus is aware of his discomfort.

So he lets his eyes flutter shut as the pulses break over him, each press on his prostate a little stranger, less recognizable as a bodily sensation. Remus can somehow feel it deep in his throat at the base of his larynx, a stoppage, a buildup. His cock is twitching of its own accord. Though his mind is still pillowy and his limbs heavy, there is a wound-tight feeling in him, too, as Albus’ fingers press, and press, and press.

A stray tear leaks out of Remus’ eye. He is helpless to brush it away. It slides down his cheek. His cock pulses again, and something rises hard in Remus, and he feels—fuck, he feels—what? and a slow thread of come leaks from his cock. Is this—he sucks in a long shaky breath—an orgasm? Dumbledore presses again, not letting up his pace in the least, and another sticky slide of come pumps out. Remus’ toes are clenching, his hands splayed out on the bed. He struggles to breath. Another press; another thin pulse of milky fluid.

“Let’s empty you out,” Dumbledore says.

Remus gasps, fingers just managing to open and close, and without meaning to he shifts his arse back a little, away from Albus’ prying hand; but he moves so slowly, as if through molasses, that all Albus needs to do is grasp his naked thigh and hold him there while his fingers dig deeper inside.

Remus is trembling, spine taut and body heavy, a sluggish stream of come pooling between his legs as Dumbledore milks him dry. Albus coaxes out another couple of pathetic spurts before his cock stops leaking come and his eyes start leaking tears.

Albus pushes experimentally on his prostate a few more times, then, getting no response besides Remus’ prick softening, extracts them gently. Remus feels his spunk drying on his thighs and on the blanket beneath him. He whimpers a little, trying to raise himself to his elbows, but he’s still so unsteady. Helpless, he whimpers again.

“It’s all right,” Albus says. “The potion will wear off soon. In the meantime, I will take care of this.” Remus watches through gummed lashes as Albus wipes his hand on a dry patch of blanket, then takes up his wand and quietly charms Remus’ cock and thighs and hole clean. Feeling the stickiness vanish calms Remus a bit, and he allows himself to breathe in and out, waiting for his senses to collect themselves.

Finally, he manages to pull himself up to a seated position, Albus guiding him by the elbow. Albus surveys him, then gently wipes at Remus’ wet face with his thumb.

“Was it what you wanted?” he asks.

There is no simple way to answer that. Even were Remus in possession of all his faculties, he could not possibly articulate everything he is feeling, let alone offer a definitive reply. He supposes Dumbledore knows this; he is brilliant, after all.

So he nods, and trusts that will be enough. “Good,” says Albus. “I’m glad.”


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> content warning for discussion of harry's shitty childhood.

Albus Dumbledore seems to grow more inscrutable the more intimate Remus becomes with him. Learning more about his life only opens up more questions, more things Remus had not known he did not know. He has put his hands in the most private of Remus’ places and somehow kept himself at a distance.

It is mostly erotic, this inscrutability. Remus fills in all the gaps with imaginings, with his own desires. There is more, always more, to discover.

But Dumbledore is an inscrutable man in every way, and has always been, and there have been times when his refusal to share his intentions and plans has made Remus burn with anger, or frustration, or sorrow, or shame. In the war, he kept them all so much in the dark: asked so much, and told so little. It made James and Sirius, especially, furious. Remus had defended Dumbledore to them more often than not. _He can’t tell me when I’m leaving next because he’s waiting till he gets word about where I’m going. He can’t give us the bigger picture because if we’re captured we might be given Veritaserum. He doesn’t have the time to make sure we’re all right. We’re just not the most important thing right now._

All that justification, as much as Remus really did believe it, could not quite squash the resentment that bubbled up when he was called away to meet with werewolf packs in the Hebrides or the Brecon Beacons at a moment’s notice, or when he had to tell Sirius, yet again, that he couldn’t share what he’d been doing or where he’d been. And in the end, of course, it had been good that he hadn’t. Albus had been right.

But it is very, very difficult to trust Albus’ choices about Harry Potter.

The boy is too thin, though Hogwarts meals are helping to put some meat on his bones—again, this hits too close to Remus, who has also gained much-needed weight since the start of term. Harry walks onto the Quidditch pitch with the air of an underdog instead of the confidence of a legacy athlete. And when he tries to fight the Dementors, he hears his parents about to die.

“I’m sorry,” Harry says yet again, three lessons in, having collapsed once more onto the floor of Remus’ office. Without alerting Harry to it—Remus is sure it would mortify him—he has charmed the stones to offer a little give when Harry hits the ground, so he isn’t covered in bruises by the end of every session. “Sorry.”

“Please don’t apologize, Harry.” He has said this so many times. “This is an extraordinarily difficult thing you are attempting, and adult wizards cannot manage it on the first try.”

Harry looks down. Remus knows he is unconvinced.

“Let’s go again,” says Remus, breaking off a square of chocolate and handing it to Harry. The chocolate does help a little, because of its particular properties, but mostly it helps because it feels good to eat it, to be soothed and nourished by something simple and sweet.

Harry nods. He is so stubborn. So determined. He believes he has, Remus thinks, so much to prove.

“Did you—” he starts without thinking, then breaks off.

“What?” Harry looks at Remus.

“Nothing, I…” He hesitates. “I was just wondering how Muggle school was for you.”

“Oh.” Harry looks surprised. “Er…okay, I guess?”

Had he been so intense about getting things right there? Had he been so stubborn?

“I mean,” Harry continues, picking at a loose thread on his robes, “it wasn’t anything like Hogwarts, of course.”

“No,” Remus agrees. Then, cautiously: “Do you miss your friends from there?”

Harry blinks. “I didn’t really have friends. Not like here.”

Remus’ heart clenches. He knows that feeling—he fucking knows that feeling all too well. He didn’t have real friends till Hogwarts, either.

“Dudley…” Harry begins. “My cousin. He was kind of—he was kind of a big deal at school, and, er, people didn’t want to get on his bad side. So they avoided me, mostly.”

There’s a hitch in his voice when he says _avoided_ that makes Remus suspect that avoidance was the best of what Harry got.

“You don’t get along with your cousin?” he asks evenly.

Harry laughs a little. “Not exactly. He’s…kind of awful.” Harry grins. “I mess around with him sometimes when I’m home. Tell him I’ll turn him into a toad if he’s being a prick. I mean, I won’t, of course.”

Remus hides a smile. There’s James—there he is, after all. “Of course.”

“It only sometimes works with my uncle,” Harry says. “Sometimes he’s scared off, and other times he locks me in my room. As if I wouldn’t be able to charm open a Muggle lock if I was allowed to use magic.”

Remus’ smile fades. “Harry, he…” He takes a steadying breath. “He locks you in your room?”

“Oh, hardly ever anymore,” Harry says quickly, flushing a bit. “It’s not a big deal.”

Remus has to turn away for a moment. He has to, so that Harry won’t see the flash of shock and anger that darkens his face. He had suspected—well, knowing how Lily had spoken of her sister, he had guessed Harry’s childhood had hardly been a walk in the park. But this—this suggests it was worse than he had imagined.

Surely not worse than Dumbledore had imagined, though. He must know. He must—he must have checked on Harry, surely, over the years? He must have seen how it was. And if he hadn’t, that wasn’t really any better.

“Professor Lupin?” Harry asks, sounding anxious. “Are we going to keep going?”

Remus wipes his face clean and turns back to Harry with a neutral expression. “Yes,” he says. “Yes, of course. Just—just think of something happy,” and if his voice breaks a little on the last word, he hopes Harry doesn’t notice.

Remus is strolling through the grounds with Poppy Pomfrey the following Saturday in the late afternoon. They’ve both got on warm boots and are each carrying a jar of little orange flames in their pockets, and she’s regaling him with tales from the last couple of years, which have apparently been rather unusually full of injuries.

“The usual Quidditch nonsense—Marcus Flint broke his nose, Harry Potter had to regrow the bones in his arm—honestly, the fact that there’s not better safety gear by now is a crime—but last year was really a dreadful time. You heard about the basilisk, I assume? Students Petrified, and I couldn’t do anything about it—didn’t know what was causing it and I was tearing my hair out, honestly. I still feel that perhaps I might have prevented some really dreadful things from happening if I’d been able to identify what was happening to those poor students.”

Remus shakes his head. “If anyone should have known, it was the Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. But, ah…”

She snorts. “Gilderoy Lockhart wouldn’t know a Basilisk from a Boomslang.”

Remus looks around to make sure no stray students are lingering by the lake on this cold January afternoon. “My classes did seem, er, a little underprepared at the beginning of the year.”

Poppy sighs. “Still. It was difficult to feel I couldn’t help those poor children. And then, on top of all that…” She throws her hands into the air: “Hermione Granger came in covered in fur!”

Remus raises his eyebrows. “Hair-Growing Jinx gone wrong?”

Poppy gives him a pointed look. “She had ears and a tail, too.”

“My goodness.”

“She was _very_ cagey about what had happened. My bet? Illicit potion transformation gone awry. Maybe even Polyjuice.”

Startled, Remus stops by a large pine tree. “Really? Hermione Granger? She’s so by-the-book.”

Poppy shakes her head. “That Harry and Ron exert a pretty strong influence over her. I think she’d do anything for them. Even if it meant getting in trouble.” She lowers her voice. “Honestly? I think it’s good for her.”

Remus smothers a surprised laugh. “I’d never have guessed you’d feel that way. You know we were all a little intimidated by you when we were students. Even I tried to be on my best behavior in the hospital wing, and I was there once a month.”

Poppy smiles. “Well. I have to maintain an orderly atmosphere, don’t I? Can’t have beds full of hysterical students lamenting the effects of trying to hex off their spots or running around bouncing off walls after having accidentally blinded themselves in potions class. Imagine.” They reach the edge of the lake and stop, looking out over the still water, the sun low and golden, burnishing the trees and the grounds with a buttery light. Remus takes a nice deep breath, tipping his face to the sky. There’s no snow on the ground, since they’ve had a couple of warmer days recently, but the air still smells like winter, fresh and cold.

“Hello, Poppy, Remus.” From the trees, not far away, Albus Dumbledore emerges. He is wearing a warm mustard-colored cloak and a rather extravagant fur-lined hat. He smiles, eyes twinkling over his half-moon spectacles. “Good to see you taking the air, despite the cold.”

Poppy smiles back. “Well. It is getting a bit chilly for me, as a matter of fact. Remus, are you ready to head in?”

His eyes flicker to Dumbledore, who says smoothly, “Actually, Remus, I’d like a word, if that’s all right.”

Remus swallows. “Yes,” he says. “Of course.”

Poppy bids them goodbye and they watch her head back across the grounds, wrapping her red scarf more snugly around her neck.

Remus doesn’t meet Albus’ eyes.

Dumbledore touches him lightly on the small of his back. “How have you been, Remus?”

When they’d last slept together, that time in Dumbledore’s bed, it had been just before the holidays. They haven’t been alone together since.

“All right.” Remus fidgets, looking out over the lake.

Albus is quiet for a moment. “How was the most recent full moon?”

“Fine.”

“I was wondering if—”

“I spoke with Harry,” Remus says. He hadn’t known he was going to say it until he opened his mouth. He swallows hard, feeling the anger that’s been smoldering low in his belly since the Patronus lesson get a little hotter. “He told me a bit about his relatives.”

“Ah,” says Albus. “And what did he say?”

“He said his uncle sometimes locks him in his room.”

There is a long silence. Remus sneaks a glance at Albus. The elderly man is watching a pair of birds swoop low over the water.

“You knew. You must have known.” Remus’ voice comes out more like a petulant child’s than he means it to. He bites his lip; it makes him nervous, just the thought of confronting Dumbledore, to whom he still owes so much. But. “You checked on him, didn’t you? As he was growing up?”

“Yes,” says Albus. “Myself, or Minerva. Every few months or so.”

A jolt of anger surges through Remus, startling him. “And what did you see, exactly?”

Albus’ blue eyes are still fixed on the birds. “I saw Harry living in a place of safety, secure from the threat of the wizarding world. And away from the hero-worship that would undoubtedly have made for a very peculiar upbringing, if not turned his head entirely.”

“He slept in a cupboard!” Remus bursts out. He stares at Albus, heart suddenly racing. “That’s what Rubeus Hagrid told me. A _cupboard_.”

Dumbledore looks at him, finally. “I know.”

“You—” Remus bites off his words. He doesn’t like this, doesn’t like losing control. He takes a deep breath. “If you knew, why on earth did you let him stay there?”

Albus hesitates, an uncharacteristic reaction that somehow makes Remus angrier. Dumbledore says, “They are his family.”

Remus actually walks a few paces away before he can bring himself to speak. “I can think of a dozen or more people,” he says, voice just on the edge of trembling, “who were far more family to Harry Potter than Lily’s sister and her horrible husband.”

Dumbledore is quiet.

“He could have—” Remus continues, then takes another deep breath. “He could have stayed with any number of wizarding families. They’d have taken him in in a heartbeat.”

“Yes,” says Albus. “But he wouldn’t have been safe.”

“Is ‘safe’ what you call it? Sleeping in a cupboard, being forced to wear all his cousin’s oversized clothes, having his glasses taped back together when they broke?”

“Do you remember what that time was like, Remus?” Albus asks. “Just after the Potters died?” He takes a step along the shore, hands coming together for warmth. “Some of the worst violence of the war happened then. The Death Eaters were furious, terrified. I had…information that they were talking about getting their revenge on Harry—yes, on a one-year-old child. And more than that, no one knew if Voldemort was really gone. If he had returned to power then…” Albus shakes his head. “Harry would have been his first target. Of that I have no doubt.”

“Protection spells,” says Remus disbelievingly. “Wards. Misdirection charms. I can understand why you wouldn’t want to use a Fidelius, but…Harry couldn’t have been safer with a Muggle family in Surrey than with you or Minerva or any other powerful wizard!”

Dumbledore is silent. After awhile, he says, “I understand why it doesn’t make sense to you, Remus. But I assure you, I had my reasons.”

Anger flares up again, flushing through Remus despite the cold. _I had my reasons._ Dumbledore always had his reasons, secret reasons no one else was allowed to know, and maybe, _maybe_ that was fair during the war, when everything was collapsing, but this— _Harry_ —

“Years later, then,” Remus says mulishly. “You could have moved him somewhere else once the threats died down. Albus, he was neglected. He was traumatized, frankly. That child is not _all right_ —”

“And do you think he would have grown up to be so courageous, so resilient, had he been feted and worshiped from the time he was a baby? Remember, we had no idea what he could do, what kind of power he had. He defeated Voldemort, somehow, as an infant. If he had turned out to be tremendously powerful, and treated as a savior by the entire wizarding world…” Dumbledore trails off. “Young men with privilege and power,” he says quietly. “They go wrong so easily.”

Stunned, Remus looks at Albus. His eyes are sunken, and maybe it’s a trick of the light, but he looks as old as Remus has ever seen him.

“Are you saying that because a hundred years ago you fell in love with someone who turned out to be rotten, you were so scared of a baby that you had to completely isolate him from his entire world?” Remus is, suddenly vibrating with rage. “I lost all my ability to trust after Sirius, but even I can see that Harry is a lonely and hurt _child_ who didn’t have to grow up that way. Not a fucking evil mastermind in training.”

There is a long and echoing silence. Albus looks out at the lake and does not reply. From the slump of his shoulders, though, Remus suspects his words have landed rather hard.

Remus walks off into the trees, clenching his fists in his pockets.

For about ten minutes, he sits on a stump just far enough into the forest that the light bouncing off the lake as the sun sets is barely visible through the foliage. He tries to get his heart rate back to normal. His hands are still shaking.

He is trying to hold off the oncoming edge of fear creeping closer, the voice that says, _You’ve fucked up now._ Somewhere inside him is a tangled, snarled knot where all of his feelings about Albus Dumbledore have been compounding for more than two decades, twisting and growing together until the gratitude is inseparable from the resentment and the resentment is inseparable from the admiration and the admiration is inseparable from the roiling, rising rage. He can still remember his mother’s face after the headmaster came to their rundown cottage to speak with her and his father in grave hushed voices about Remus’ future at Hogwarts, the hope that glowed in her eyes for the first time in years. He can still remember the bitter bile at the back of his throat when Dumbledore sent him to reach out to the most nasty, notorious werewolf pack in Britain during the war, a pack that had once counted Fenrir Greyback among its number. The elderly man with the kind eyes at the head of the Great Hall; the forbidding leader, lean and aloof, sending down orders from on high; the man with the slightly drooping belly and wrinkled thighs, the man with two fingers up Remus’ arse. He owed his life to Albus Dumbledore. More than that, he liked him. He always had.

But Sirius’ complaints during the war come back to him now: _Always ready to send us into danger, but does he ever give us a hint of what he’s planning? Fuck, Moony, you’d fucking tell me what you do when you’re away if Dumbledore didn’t say you couldn’t, and then you wouldn’t be so miserable and lonely…_ True, it turned out that Sirius had had other reasons for criticizing Dumbledore, and for wanting to know where Remus went. But James had said it too, if less angrily. And now, Harry. Harry.

Remus knows he is angry with himself for abandoning Harry all those years ago in the wake of his parents’ deaths. He knows that some of his fury with Albus is in truth aimed in a boomerang path, swerving back around and flying fast and vicious at his own heart. But what kind of life could a poor, jobless, and heartbroken werewolf give a child? He had left, retreated, and told himself Harry would be well cared for. But Harry wasn’t, and Remus’ guilt for that fact would likely never be assuaged.

“Remus?”

Albus is standing in the lengthening shadows, between two tall trees. Despite his big fur hat, he looks imposing and impressive. A figure out of a fairy tale. Even Muggles have stories about men like him, men who guide them through the storm.

“Remus, I owe you an explanation.”

Remus looks at him. His toes are cold, and the jar of flames in his pocket has all but gone out.

“For what, exactly?”

For a second, Albus looks almost uncertain. “For Harry.”

Below Remus’ feet, the ground is cold and hard. The knot inside him, the Dumbledore knot, is lodged in his gut. The light is fading fast.

“All right,” says Remus. “Explain.”

Albus sighs. He walks farther into the woods, but stops before he is within arm’s reach of Remus. “I told you Harry would be safe with his family,” he says quietly. “I meant that quite literally. There is an old, old magic, the kind of magic we do not teach at Hogwarts, for it is far too complex and uncertain for modern wizards. We have all but forgotten it. But it is…strong.”

A breeze moves through the trees, blowing several long strands of Dumbledore’s beard into his face. He moves them back into place as he says: “Blood magic. Lily gave her life for Harry, you know. From what I have been able to ascertain, she gave it by choice. That created a peculiar and powerful reaction. A kind of protection. I believe it to be, in fact, what saved Harry’s life that night.”

Remus takes it in, a lump at the back of his throat. Lily. He wonders if Dumbledore knows that Lily pleading for her life is what Harry hears when the Dementors are near.

“That protection can be extended,” Albus continues. “It is, as I say, an old kind of magic. It recognizes blood, and it recognizes home. As long as Harry is still a child, if he makes his home with a blood relation of the person who sacrificed her life to save him—with Lily Evans’ family—Voldemort will be unable to harm him there. Remus, I know his life has been enormously, unjustly difficult. But Petunia Dursley must willingly give him shelter until he comes of age if the magic is to hold. I could not afford to alienate her from him. If he had grown up elsewhere, with anyone else in the world, he would have been vulnerable to Voldemort. It is very possible that Quirinius Quirrell, once he housed Voldemort’s soul, would have immediately sought out Harry and attempted to kill him, were it not for this protection. It has been an extraordinarily difficult decision, believe me, but keeping Harry alive has been…has had to be…my first priority.”

Somewhere, a bird calls. Remus’ heartbeat is loud in the quiet forest. The sun has nearly set; Dumbledore’s face is in shadow.

“We were his family,” Remus says, voice choked and cracked. “Not his blood. But his family.”

“I know.”

Albus comes closer. He rests one hand against a tree, looking down at Remus. For the first time since Remus has known him, he looks frail: old, and sad, and weary.

“I am,” he says, voice hoarse, “rather a relic, Remus. The product of a bygone era, when the world looked to great men, to singular individuals, to tell it what to do. I should not be the one making these decisions. By rights, I am only a schoolteacher. When I gave up my position on the Wizengamot and retreated to Hogwarts, I believed I was abdicating such responsibilities. But…” He pauses, looking deeper into the darkening forest. “The Ministry has not proved up to the task which it has been set. Again and again, its leaders look to me for answers. And so I provide them.” His voice is almost inaudible as he says: “I never wished for this, Remus. I never wished this for Harry. And I never wished to be the one to put him in this position. I…care about him, you know. Very, very much. He is an extraordinary young man. And that—well. That is to his credit, and his alone.”

The sun has set. The woods feel unmoored: Remus would believe, if someone told him, that he and Albus had been cut loose from the world, and that they were floating on a small patch of trees and sky, out into the darkness of infinity.

“It isn’t fair,” Remus whispers. Blood magic: something so old, so deep, it reminds him of the way Sirius spoke of his family, his blood family—like a gravitational pull, a pit of quicksand. He has built his life as best he could on the building blocks of _home_ and _family_ as concepts he has made his own: they are people and places you choose. They are not blood and roots in some ancient ancestral plot of land. They are not your mother’s narrow-minded sister and a two-story suburban house with a manicured lawn.

“It is one of the least fair things I have ever encountered,” Albus agrees simply. “And one of the worst choices I have ever had to make.”

There is another long silence. Remus feels old, and sad, and weary.

“I am sorry.”

Albus might be apologizing to him. Or he might be speaking to Harry, absent though he is, or to a whole host of people, all of those through the years who have been hurt or angered or worse by Albus’ decisions. Whomever it is his apology is for, Remus knows he cannot absolve him. He knows the kind of guilt that will never let go.

“We should go back inside,” says Remus. “It’s gotten dark.”

Albus inclines his head.

“I think there’s banoffee pie tonight.” Remus clears his throat and gets to his feet. “I went down to the kitchens earlier.”

A pause. “I do enjoy a good banoffee pie,” says Albus.

“Shall we?”

“Yes,” says Albus. “I suppose we shall.”


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick content warning note: your mileage may vary on how Albus approaches consent here. Remus has a chance to say no to what's suggested or what's being done at any given moment, but Albus doesn't ask him step by step if what he's about to do is okay. Remus has a complicated reaction to this, though he never considers anything they're doing to be crossing a line he doesn't want crossed. But I thought I might mention that if you're feeling particularly sensitive to sex that isn't based in thorough communication, and that involves a bit of one party feeling sort of taken advantage of (albeit in a way they are okay with), you might want to keep a heads up here since this could be a tricky read. If you've been okay so far, you'll probably be okay in this chapter. Take care of yourself! <3

At the end of January, the weather turns truly bitter. Freezing winds whip through the grounds, shaking the windowpanes and sending drafts skittering through the corridors. Filius Flitwick offers all the professors a clever warming charm for their offices, contained in a glowing glass ball that works more or less like a Muggle space heater. Remus places his on his desk, where it proves a charming little companion in the dark winter evenings.

About a week after their talk in the forest, Albus asks Remus to his office. They’ve exchanged no more than a few cordial words at meals and in the staff room since; Remus isn’t sure if he’s still angry with Albus. Or rather, he knows that he is, but he is full of so many complicating factors and feelings in addition to anger that he cannot really gauge where he stands with the headmaster right now.

Albus gives him a cup of tea and asks him about a project he’s been doing with his sixth-years. After a few minutes of rather wary conversation, Albus sets down his teacup and says, “Do you remember Elphias Doge?”

Remus freezes for a split second, stopped in his tracks by that name coming out of Dumbledore’s mouth. “From the Order,” he says. “Yes, of course.”

He is not sure if he is supposed to know about Doge and Albus. He has been wondering if perhaps Minerva let slip something Albus meant to keep for himself. After he’d realized who she’d been talking about, he’d looked through some of his old photographs to try and find a picture of the man, and there he was in a group picture of the Order, in the back row and half-hidden behind the tall Kingsley Shacklebolt. Doge was mentioned in the _Prophet,_ too, a couple weeks back, in some boringly technical article about Statute of Secrecy-related legislation. Remus can find nothing to suggest that there is anything remarkable about Elphias Doge, except that he is as old as Albus and has been well-connected in the wizarding world since the previous century. But a long-term relationship with Albus Dumbledore—what is it about him that would merit that? Presumably, if a long-term relationship was what they had, there were shared beds, shared breakfasts; shared evenings by the fire, long conversations, wallpaper chosen together, or—or at least a drawer full of Dumbledore’s things at Doge’s house and a plan to conceal his presence there when strangers came to call, a set of excuses for why they were so close. But Doge seems such an unremarkable man.

“Well,” says Albus, “he’s coming to visit this weekend. He’ll be staying with me.”

Albus sips his tea and Remus waits.

“Elphias and I have a long history,” Dumbledore says. “We were at school together. Later, we were lovers. We lived together for a few decades, in fact, before I took the position at Hogwarts.”

Remus pretends his pulse isn’t racing, that he isn’t more than appropriately interested. “Oh, I see.”

“Since then,” says Albus, “we’ve stayed very close. Elphias didn’t want to be tied to Hogwarts, so we went our separate ways, but he’s been a dear friend ever since. We manage to spend time together a few times a year.” He sips his tea again. “Generally, rather a lot of that time is spent in bed.”

Remus chokes. He does so as subtly as possible, taking a hasty drink of tea to conceal it.

Albus’ eyes twinkle.

“Mm,” Remus manages. He is quite at a loss for how he is meant to respond to this information.

“I was wondering,” Albus says lightly, “and I’ve spoken to Elphias about this—would you like to join us, this weekend? I think you’d quite enjoy meeting him. We could all have dinner and some wine, perhaps in Hogsmeade, and then return to my rooms.”

Remus gives fervent thanks to his former self for perfecting the art of emotional repression. It is the only thing keeping his jaw from falling to the floor.

“Oh,” he says. He eats a bite of a digestive biscuit. “Goodness. That’s quite an offer.”

He is pretty sure Albus is eyeing him with concealed amusement, but he maintains his dignity as best he can.

“I think…”

What does he think? A threesome, with Albus Dumbledore? With Albus Dumbledore and his former partner and long-term lover, a man who is also more than three times Remus’ age? The reasons to delicately bow out seem obvious, until Remus considers for more than a minute and suddenly they don’t. Why on earth not? He wants to see them together; he can admit that. Just the thought of Albus and Doge at dinner, exchanging familiar small talk and affectionate glances, sends his stomach into pleasurable disarray.

“I think, yes, that would be…nice.”

_Nice._ Language is sometimes extremely inadequate.

“Oh good,” says Albus, leaning back and smiling. “I think you two will get along well.”

Elphias Doge is a friendly, rather fussy man. Whereas Albus’ age gives him an air of gravity and wisdom, and even, at times, of danger, Elphias is a bit antique. He dresses impeccably for dinner in a set of sharply pressed dress robes whose smoothness unintentionally exaggerates the many wrinkles and folds of his age-mottled skin. His white hair is thinning on top and several wisps of it float gently above his head. Like Albus, he is haler and healthier than any Muggle would be at over a hundred years old, but he walks slowly, like Remus remembers his great-granddad doing when he was young and would run impatiently ahead on family walks.

“It’s good to see you again, Mr. Lupin,” says Doge. “I was just telling Albus—”

“Remus, please,” he interjects hurriedly.

“Remus, yes, I suppose when one has fought Death Eaters together first names are rather in order. And you must call me Elphias. In any case, I was just telling Albus that I was glad he’d got someone competent for the Defense Against the Dark Arts post. It’s so crucial in these times especially that our children learn to protect themselves. Your firsthand experience makes you an ideal candidate—ah, thank you,” he says to the waiter, who has arrived with a bottle of red wine, “I’ll have a glass. And the snapping pepper pods to start, please, if they’re fresh.”

Remus also accepts the offer of wine, watching Elphias Doge lift a glass fastidiously to his lips and feeling rather bewildered. He sneaks a glance at Dumbledore, who is watching this short, slightly pompous man with an affectionate gaze.

“Gilderoy Lockhart,” Elphias says, shaking his head. “Honestly, Albus, how could you?”

“As you know, Elphias,” Albus replies, a note of amusement just detectable in his voice, “I am often forced to pick my battles. Mr. Lockhart had quite a lot of influence in certain circles and while I could have denied his application that would have ruffled some feathers I preferred to leave unruffled.”

Elphias gives an indelicate snort, rather to Remus’ surprise. “Mr. Lockhart. Gilded Gildy, you mean.”

Remus’ eyebrows shoot up. Elphias gives him a smirk. “You’d never heard that one before?”

“Ah,” says Remus, “no. Did you…know Lockhart?”

“Didn’t you?” Elphias asks, surprised. “He must have been at school with you.”

“He was younger,” Remus replies. “I…didn’t have much cause to interact with him. But how…”

“We all knew Lockhart!” Elphias chortles. “If you’d been in London over the last ten years you’d have known him too. He was always swanning in and out of the Merman’s Mug and the Tentacula like he owned the places, flashing those blinding white teeth and batting his baby blues. Managed to work his way through half the bent wizarding population somehow—insufferable as he was, he had a certain unsubtle kind of charm.”

“And were you charmed by him, Elphie?” Albus asks, casually sipping his wine.

Elphias grins. “I might as well have been an old sack of flour to him. He went for the younger, more muscular types. Traded experience for beauty. His loss, I’d say.”

Remus is listening wide-eyed to this conversation, which has taken a turn he was altogether unprepared for.

“Gilded Gildy,” Albus muses. “I feel rather sorry for him now, you know. Memory entirely wiped. Most unfortunate.”

“There was nothing to wipe in the first place,” Elphias says wickedly. He sips his wine, then smiles at Remus. “I hope you don’t think I’m a spiteful old queen. I wouldn’t have slept with Lockhart, but I can appreciate the appeal.”

Albus looks rather meaningfully at Remus, as if to say, _I told you you’d like him_ , and Remus stifles a sudden urge to giggle.

The dinner conversation spans an entire century and a wide range of topics, from advancements in theoretical arithmancy to which Ministry official uses the most obnoxious owl post send-off (“ _awaiting your prompt response with all due respect and anticipation_ is not worse than _officially yours_ , Albus, that’s madness”), and Remus’ head is spinning. He cannot remember the last time he was required to keep up with such a lively discussion, or in the presence of people who know each other so intimately that half of what they say is a kind of private shorthand. Nor has he ever seen anyone, Minerva included, so comfortably tease Albus Dumbledore.

Elation and nerves alternate with curious pangs of longing—Remus is third-wheeling, though in a rather load-bearing capacity given what they’re about to do, and the pleasure of hearing a one-hundred-plus-year-old wizard explain to him that Albus is laughing into his napkin because the phrase “special circumstances” reminds him of a Hogwarts professor who in 1895 accidentally ingested a Euphoria Serum before their Charms class is threaded through with small quantities of regret and jealousy. At times during their meal Remus wonders if he is in fact extraneous; ten or fifteen minutes sometimes pass without him finding occasion to speak. They have been treating him like an equal, but there is no escaping the fact that they know much more than he does about nearly everything, and that they share experiences and knowledge far beyond his own. But then Elphias asks him about his classes, or his opinions on the most recent column in the _Daily Prophet_ , and Remus clears his throat and attempts an answer; and as they all consume more wine Elphias starts to look him over appraisingly. It makes Remus blush, and it feels peculiarly impersonal in a way he actually finds he rather enjoys. In this scenario, he is the one who is young, and desirable, and comparatively untethered—qualities Remus has never really felt he possessed before. So the comfortable sense of colleagues dining together gives way, in bits and pieces, to the kind of erotically saturated atmosphere in which Elphias can murmur to Dumbledore, as they leave the restaurant for the chilly streets of Hogsmeade, “He’s really quite a catch, Albus, for an old man like you.”

Flushed with three glasses of wine and a flutter of nerves, Remus returns to Hogwarts with the two men in a sort of dizzy haze. Half an hour later he stands awkwardly in the doorway of Albus’ bedroom as Elphias, entirely at ease, removes his scarf and gloves and coat and places them on the desk. “Come in, Remus,” Albus says, so Remus does, unsure what happens next.

“Where is it,” Elphias murmurs, now rooting around in a small chest of drawers, “did you rearrange again? Ah.” He pulls out a bottle labeled _Southerly’s Stamina Serum_ and uncorks it. He raises it in a mock toast to Remus and takes a swig. Licking his lips, he says, “I’m afraid I need a little assistance these days. Albus on the other hand is criminally fit, as you know. Very unfair. He always has had all the luck.”

Remus has no idea how to diplomatically reply to this, so he keeps his mouth shut.

“Come here,” says Elphias. “You seem nervous.” He sits on the bed, gesturing to Remus.

“Oh,” says Remus, embarrassed, “I’m all right.”

“Well, come here anyway.”

He obeys, standing in front of Elphias, who takes him by the hand and pulls him in for a kiss. His hands are moist, his skin full of folds, as he cups Remus’ face. His breath smells like red wine and spicy arrabbiata. Remus inhales through his nose as their lips meet.

“Albus,” murmurs Elphias, “do the honors, will you?”

“Gladly.” With a flick of his wand, their clothes swiftly remove themselves, unbuttoning and sliding off of limbs and folding themselves neatly into three separate piles on the table. Remus’ stomach contracts at his sudden nakedness—his scars, his visible ribcage—but his cock twitches.

“Ah, youth,” Elphias says, looking wistfully at Remus’ hardening prick.

“You’ve had plenty of youth in your day,” Albus says. “You’ve had youths in every gay club in Europe.”

“He exaggerates,” says Elphias. “I only wanted to be that much of a tart. Come get me going, will you?”

Dumbledore, entirely unselfconscious about his nakedness, pulls a chair up across from Elphias, next to Remus, who is still standing, and begins to stroke Elphias’ soft cock. Elphias lets out a long breath, tipping his head back. “He has absurdly long fingers, doesn’t he?” Elphias murmurs to Remus.

Remus swallows. “Yes. He does.”

Albus gives Remus a little smile.

Remus watches Albus’ absurdly long fingers coax Elphias’ prick slowly into hardness. He does it dexterously, his grip familiar and easy, his movements confident. Remus cannot help but think of all the times he has done this before, hundreds and maybe even thousands of times, and knows with a little thrill that the particular press of Dumbledore’s thumb against the base of Elphias’ cock is aimed with purposeful precision to evoke the little moan that escapes Elphias’ lips. Remus sinks down to a seat on the bed, mesmerized, butterflies still swarming in his stomach.

“Ahh,” Elphias sighs eventually. His eyelashes flutter open and he looks over at Remus’ crotch. “Now we’re even.”

Albus rises from his chair. He puts one hand at the base of Remus’ neck and the other on his shoulder. His ropy leg comes between Remus’, pushing against his prick. He maneuvers Remus onto his back on the bed, half straddling him, fingernails gently pressing into Remus’ skin. Elphias adjusts, too, moving to sit back and watch, his paunch poking out, his chest sagging, his erection high and hard. Albus leans down farther, brushing his lips in a kiss before putting his tongue into Remus’ mouth, sliding it so far in Remus has to breathe through his nose. He tweaks one of Remus’ nipples, and then the other. Remus can hear Elphias breathing hard and feels his eyes on them both.

“Oh,” groans Elphias, reaching out a hand and feeling up Remus’ cock, “oh, Albus, I want to fuck him.”

“I thought you would,” Albus responds as Remus inhales sharply.

“Want my cock inside that smooth young arse. Just look at him, Albus…”

“I know.” Albus replies.

Remus swallows hard. “I’m good with that,” he says truthfully.

Albus smiles down at him, a small smile that says, _we are not finished yet_. “And?” he asks Elphias, throwing the query over his shoulder as he rubs two fingers along Remus’ collarbone.

“I want you to fuck me.”

“You’re nothing if not predictable, Elphie.”

“Shut up, you bitchy old…” He gasps as Albus grasps a handful of his wispy hair and pulls. “Ahh.”

Remus’ heart is pounding. _At the same time?_ he is thinking. _At the same time?_

“Merlin’s tits,” complains Elphias, moaning nonetheless, “you’re so _bossy_ , Albus…”

Albus snorts. “ _I’m_ bossy?”

“He’s bossy, Remus, isn’t he? What has he done to you, hm? Marked you all up? Made you come on his face?”

“Yes,” Remus stutters, “he—he did—”

Elphias moans louder. “Of course. What an old prick.” He reaches underneath Albus’ arm, which is resting on Remus’ leg, and pets the downy hair on Remus’ inner thighs. “Get on your stomach, will you? That’s a good lad. Oh…” As Remus, blushing hot, turns his face toward the bed and moves onto his stomach, Elphias strokes his arse, running his fingers along the crack. “Oh, I can’t wait to be inside of you. Albus—”

Albus murmurs that wandless charm and Remus’ arsehole is suddenly wet and loose. Judging by Elphias’ grunt and the way he shifts his legs, Albus has killed two birds with one stone.

_At the same time_ , he thinks a little wildly. _He means at the same time._

“Arse up, pretty boy,” Elphias murmurs. Remus grips the blanket in his fists. He wonders if it’s possible his arse is flushing pink the way his cheeks are; a flame of self-conscious lust sparking in his stomach, he pushes his arse higher, a trail of excess lube leaking out of his hole.

“Mmm,” Elphias says, and a pudgy finger pokes at Remus’ entrance, sliding itself in a short distance and making Remus bite back a startled moan. Elphias’ fingernail nudges against Remus’ inner wall, blunt and a bit uncomfortable.

“Good?” Albus asks, and Remus tries to muster the voice with which to say yes before realizing, as Elphias murmurs his assent, that the question was not mean for him.

Remus cranes his neck as Elphias sets himself up behind him, the head of his prick slipping over Remus’ hole, to see if he can catch a glimpse of Dumbledore. He sees the expanse of a long leg and, poking up obscenely at the edge of Remus’ vision, a sliver of blood-flushed cock. Elphias presses in. He’s neither lithe nor steady, not at all like Albus. He pushes in in small irregular jerks, a huff of exertion accompanying each one. But he’s determined, clearly, and he keeps going past the point Remus thinks is possible, seating himself inside Remus so deep that Remus feels his wrinkled balls heavy against his arse.

“Thank goodness for Southerly’s Serum,” Elphias gasps out, “I haven’t been able to do that on my own since my late seventies—”

“You two make quite a picture,” Albus interrupts, his voice quiet and intense. The mood shifts; Remus feels it in his own body and in Elphias’, which tenses up on top of him as if in sudden anticipation. “Elphias?”

“Do it,” he grits out, and although Remus cannot see anything that is happening he feels the weight on his prone body increase as Elphias shifts forward, knees fumbling for position on either side of Remus, and Dumbledore’s hand lands on Remus’ shoulder for a moment’s balance. Remus struggles to breathe. So does Elphias, and Remus’s arsehole strains as Elphias pushes—is pushed, is pushed—somehow deeper inside as Albus enters Elphias.

Sweat has broken out on Remus’ brow, his chest, the insides of his knees; he can barely breathe, pinned to the bed by the weight of the two old men, and he wheezes as Elphias begins to cry out, his cock jerking forward inside Remus as Albus’ cock thrusts forward inside him. Remus feels the force of them both, his mind breaking apart and floating off in different directions, fucked by two cocks, fucked by someone getting fucked, and his own prick is pinned to the bed with no hope at all of relief. He can do nothing but let his body be jostled back and forth, letting his arms spread out at his sides, his arsehole stinging and hot with the small jerks of Elphias’ cock trying and failing to burrow deeper. Albus’ breath joins Elphias’, labored and rhythmic where Elphias’ is ragged and wild, and Remus’ own breath, strained and desperate, is the undercurrent for both; he is the ground on which they are fucking, the holding place for Elphias’ cock as he gets fucked, the anonymous boy they’ve brought home for some fun: he is panting, he is overstimulated, he is on the knife’s edge of arousal and discomfort; he is the receptacle for Elphias’ shameless moans and cries and, soon enough, for the slick spurting slide of his come into Remus’ arse which makes Remus gasp with shocked pleasure. Dumbledore keeps fucking him through it, Remus can feel Elphias’ body getting shoved back and forth even as his cock goes soft inside Remus; “yes, yes,” Elphias babbles, “keep going,” and Remus never wants it to stop but can hardly stand it—can hardly stand it for the next five or six minutes as Albus fucks Elphias into him until, finally, Albus sucks in a breath and spasms in orgasm.

There is no way for them to extract themselves without Remus experiencing a certain amount of pain. His hole is so stretched and sensitive that he can’t suppress a wincing whimper as Dumbledore pulls out of Elphias and Elphias pulls out of Remus. His breath comes back with a desperate whoosh and he gulps for air.

Elphias lies on his back, at least as winded, one hand flung over his forehead. His face is damp with sweat and his fingers grasp feebly at the messy blanket.

Albus remains a bit more composed, though his beard is wild and mussed and his arms are trembling with the effort of holding up his body for so long. Remus watches with glazed eyes, only half-hard now and wanting badly to be harder, as Albus fetches something from his bedside table.

“Soothing balm,” he explains to Remus as he gently parts Elphias’ legs and applies a dollop of the clearish-white substance to Elphias’ arsehole. Elphias sighs in relief, limbs relaxing slightly.

Albus goes to Remus next, spreading the balm over his hole and pushing it just inside with one long finger. Remus exhales with relief; he hadn’t quite realized how sore and tender he’d become. After a few moments, his cock starts to respond to the cool, soothing sensation, hardening fully again. He wants more. He needs more.

“If I were fifty years younger,” comes Elphias’ weary voice from beside him, “I’d go again.”

Albus laughs. His finger soothes Remus’ hole for a moment longer, then retreats. “Fifty years ago you’d have demanded a nap and a bath first. And probably something to eat.”

“That’s true. You know me far too well. I’ll never impress Remus with you here.”

“Speaking of Remus.”

“Ah,” says Elphias. “Yes. I can’t move, I’m afraid, but if you’d like to suck him off I’d be more than happy to watch from here.”

Remus listens to this back-and-forth, still hazy with both exhaustion and need. At Elphias’ suggestion, his glazed eyes flicker to Dumbledore’s. Albus arches an eyebrow, then picks up his wand and flicks it at Remus. With a jolt in his stomach as if he’s on an elevator, Remus rises several feet above the bed, hovering prostrate with his gaze toward the ceiling.

“For the sake of my back,” Albus says wryly. Remus, whose pulse jumped when his body levitated and has not yet settled, cranes his neck forward to see Dumbledore arranging himself on the bed, one naked knee brushing Elphias’ thigh, his head just at the level where Remus is hovering. He parts Remus’ legs—the sensation is peculiar, Remus feeling both supported and not by the empty air beneath him—and takes Remus’ cock into his mouth.

“Ah,” Elphias says with a gratified sigh, and as Albus’ lips close around his cock Remus shudders with relief. He glances down to see Elphias looking up, watching with a satisfied expression like the cat that got the cream. Remus’ belly flips for the dozenth time that night and he lets his head fall back as Albus sucks him deeper.

There is nothing to grab onto when he starts to feel shakily out of control, no blankets to grasp, no possibility of digging his heels into the mattress. He lolls his head back and forth, his whole body feeling strange and prickly and exposed; he can’t—he can’t quite—tighten up the way he’s used to, and without meaning to he lets out a tiny moan.

“Ah, so he can speak,” says Elphias, a little breathless. “Couldn’t believe how quiet you were the whole time you were getting double fucked.”

Remus whimpers. Albus pauses, breathing through his nose, and then sinks deeper onto Remus’ cock.

“I remember when Albus perfected his technique,” Elphias says slyly. “If you’ll believe it, he had quite the gag reflex once upon a time.”

Albus swallows around Remus, saliva dripping from his mouth. Remus shudders in a loud breath and his fingers scrabble in thin air for purchase on something, anything. He feels a rush of sensation building low within him, his orgasm coming on. He shifts a little, trying to wriggle away, to warn Dumbledore, but he can’t really push himself through the air. He mumbles, “I—I—”

“Oh, you can come down his throat,” says Elphias. “Can’t he, Albus?”

Through a throatful of Remus’ cock, Albus hums his assent. The vibration nearly undoes Remus and Elphias’ next words push him over: “Did you ever dream that Albus Dumbledore was such a slag?”

Remus shouts, jerking in the air, come pulsing from his cock and into Albus’ open mouth. He pants, fingers opening and closing, trying to stop his legs from kicking out. When he is finished, Albus withdraws, wiping his mouth delicately.

“ _Finite incantatem,_ ” he says, voice hoarse, and Remus’ body lowers gently to the bed. When he gets there, Elphias reaches out and runs a hand over his chest, half stroking, half patting. “Marvelous boy,” he murmurs. “What a show.”

Remus accepts the offer of a shower before he goes. Albus and Elphias clean themselves up in the bedroom as Remus steps into the blue-tiled bathroom on shaky legs. He closes the door and then sits heavily on the edge of the porcelain tub. Well.

That was…

He shakes his head. That was not something he is capable of thinking through just yet. He turns on the tap. The water comes out hot straightaway; Remus nearly melts at its touch on his skin. Legs aching—he’s going to feel this one in the morning—he climbs into the shower and pulls the curtain, enclosing himself in a warm, steamy little space.

He cleans himself slowly, chest, elbows, thighs, feet. He soaps his belly and tips his head back to let the water soak his hair. Gently, he cleans his cock and his arsehole, wiping away any remaining spunk or lube or sweat. His brain is staticky, still. That’s fine. When he is alone, tucked up in his tiny rooms, he will be able to consider everything: dinner, drinks, the walk over, the sex, the aftermath. Right now he has the general impression of shapes and sounds and sensations filling him up to the brim. So much to absorb, and to process.

He doesn’t want to be impolite, so he ends his shower sooner than his sore muscles would have liked. As he towels himself off, he hears voices from the bedroom, interspersed with laughter. They aren’t trying to keep quiet, so Remus listens in, though it still feels a little like eavesdropping.

“It’s very difficult for me to believe you’re hungry after that excellent dinner,” Albus is saying.

“It’s not about hunger. It’s about the ritual,” Elphias’ voice replies. “Tea and biscuits.”

“Tea and biscuits after a good hard rogering,” says Albus’ amused voice.

“That’s when they’re needed most.”

The conversation sounds as though it’s been had many times before, affection and familiarity turning every word fond, the exchange’s substance less important than the fact of its repetition.

“All right,” says Albus, “I’ll put the kettle on.”

“No sugar,” Elphias calls after him, “I’m trying to cut back.”

“Again?”

“Oh, sod off.”

Albus laughs as his footsteps recede. It is that laugh, light, easy, that does it: that laugh punches Remus right in the gut, and all at once he is sliding to the floor, hands pressed against his mouth, eyes smarting with tears.

_Fuck_ , he thinks, _not here, just fucking wait_ , but he is crying, trying with all his might to do it silently. He doesn’t even know why. It’s like his body has just given out, given up. Surrendered or broken: whatever it is, Remus sobs helplessly into his knees, curling in on himself as he breathes and breathes, trying to regain control.

“Remus?” calls Elphias’ voice, sounding hesitant. “Are you all right?”

Several huge gulps of air, a deep breath: “Fine,” Remus manages, but the word comes out wrong, wavering and then convulsive as his throat contracts. There is a pause, and then Elphias comes to the door.

“Remus?” he says again.

Remus tries to get some normal-sounding words out, but before he’s anywhere near ready, the door opens. Elphias, dressed now in a soft cream-colored dressing gown, looks down at Remus, crying on the floor.

“Oh, dear,” he says. Gently, he shuts the door behind him. He perches on the side of the bathtub, bones creaking as he sits. He reaches out and softly strokes Remus’ hair, just once. “What is it?”

Remus squeezes his eyes shut, refusing to look at Elphias, and shakes his head. “I—I don’t know.”

“Sometimes after a very intense experience,” says Elphias, “there’s a bit of a—collapse.”

“I’m fine,” Remus insists. “Really. It’s fine.”

“No,” says Elphias musingly, “that’s certainly not true. Does this happen often? Is there something you’d like from me, something that would help?”

“It’s not that,” Remus says, swallowing back more tears, though he can’t say for sure that the sex hasn’t loosened him up enough to finally let these feelings out. “It’s just…just…”

Albus’ laugh. _I’ll put the kettle on_.

“All my old friends are dead,” Remus chokes out.

There comes what Remus assumes can only be a horrified silence.

“Oh, my dear,” Elphias says. His voice is slightly hoarse. “Oh, my dear.” He rests a hand on Remus’ arm. Remus is wrapped in only a towel, as his clothes are still in the other room.

Elphias was there; he knows. He knows who Remus has lost, and how he has lost them. Knows which old friend is not, in fact, dead, and why that is, in so many ways, much worse.

“There have been many times over the years when I was certain my friendship with Albus would not survive the obstacles life threw in its way,” Elphias says. “And many reasons that one or both of us ought not to be here now. But we have, in our way, been very lucky.”

Remus’ tears are leaking from his eyes now, rather than pouring. He feels emptied out. His head is starting to ache.

“It isn’t fair,” says Elphias. “But you know that already.”

If Remus were in a more normal state, or a more normal place—his own bathroom, perhaps, wrapped in his own towel—he would likely have apologized to Elphias for causing a scene. But he has no energy to feel embarrassed.

“I’ll never have that,” he says quietly. “I’ll never have what you do.”

Elphias lets out a long sigh. He surveys Remus for a moment, and then says, “I know this is the least helpful thing I could tell you right now, Remus, but…you are still, really and truly, very young.”

Remus squeezes his eyes shut. In years, maybe. But his life was emptied out so early, and he can see nothing ahead that can possibly fill it again.

“You have—and I do not mean this in a foolishly optimistic way—no idea what life will throw at you,” says Elphias. “You simply cannot know.” He gets to his feet, one hand resting on the sink for support. “None of us can.”

Albus calls from the kitchen, “Tea, Elphie!”

“Let’s get you dressed again,” says Elphias, “and then you can decide if you want to stay for tea.”


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings: reference to the Holocaust (in relation to Grindelwald) and brief fantasy involving nonconsensual sex. Both are in the final section of the chapter in case you want to skip it.

Paralysis: that is all Remus can fathom as a diagnosis for his current state. He is, in some way, helplessly paralyzed.

Because when Sirius rips open Ron Weasley’s bed curtains, brandishing a knife and looking for Harry, Remus does nothing.

_At least he didn’t kill Ron,_ he thinks, and that is what it has come to: gratitude that Sirius is not a killer of innocent children.

But he doesn’t tell Albus about Padfoot.

And the following week, when he has the Marauder’s Map in his hands once more, fresh from scolding Harry for not turning it in, he sits at his desk, looking at the parchment that still bears insults towards Snape in his and his friends’ adolescent voices, and feels entirely blank. Nothing. He traces the signature with his finger: _Moony_. That was him, once upon a time. It is not him now.

“I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he says quietly, and taps the map with his wand. Curlicues and arabesques of ink unfold, lines branching like fast-growing vines, the castle materializing, tiny footprints and hundreds of tiny names: Albus conversing with Pomona Sprout in the entrance hall, Snape pacing the dungeons. Remus Lupin in his office, a still, unmoving dot.

It is astonishing and improbable that he and his friends made this map. It is astonishing and improbable that his friends became Animagi as teenagers. It is astonishing and improbable that they died so young, murdered by one of their own. All of it, Remus thinks, was somehow due to the strange alchemy of their intimacy. There is not one of those things—creating, transforming, dying—that any of them would have managed alone.

Perhaps that is why Remus is so hollow now. He was never meant to exist independently from the others.

He wipes and folds the map. If he gives it to Albus Dumbledore, he will have to explain everything. It is not only that Albus will no longer trust him; it is not only that the headmaster will find out that, when Remus was at school, he and his friends endangered hundreds of people each month on the full moon just so Remus wouldn’t feel so bad. Remus probably does care about those things, and they are probably part of the reason he is keeping silent. But his paralysis goes beyond anything he can articulate in words. His body simply will not move to go to Albus. His mouth will not open to tell him. A dull oppressive gloom has settled over him. He is saturated with guilt. It is too late for him to fix anything. It has been too late for twelve and a half years.

Albus is in Remus’ sitting room, stroking him through his trousers. Remus shudders, gripping the arms of the chair and breathing hard. “Are you all right, Remus?” Albus asks quietly, hand still moving.

“Yeah,” Remus gasps. “It’s good.”

Albus continues stroking him but shakes his head. “Not this. You. There has been rather a cloud over you these last several weeks.”

Remus bites his lip, fear flashing through him. Albus grips him harder and Remus squeezes his eyes shut for a moment.

“I’m fine,” he manages.

A silence, for a moment, as Albus presses his palm against his trousers, where a damp spot is starting to show through. “I don’t think that’s true.”

Remus tries to marshal his thoughts as his prick clamors for his attention. Animagi, and the map. No. “I—ah, fuck.” He puts a hand on his forehead. Albus isn’t letting up at all. “Look, I just…”

“Elphias mentioned…” Albus says quietly. Remus flushes hard. He hadn’t expected Elphias to keep his conversation with Remus to himself. But he also hadn’t expected Albus to bring it up. Let alone when stroking Remus closer and closer to a climax.

“Fuck,” he says again. “Albus, I…” Albus presses in just the right spot and Remus groans.

“I care about you,” says Albus. With a deft twist, he pulls Remus’ orgasm from him, and Remus shudders and cries out, bucking in the armchair until he is done.

“Scourgify,” Albus says quietly, and the come beginning to leak down Remus’ leg vanishes.

Remus puts his face in his hands, rubbing at his forehead.

“How are the full moons?” Albus asks.

Remus swallows. “Good,” he says, still short of breath. “Good. Better, I…” He inhales and then exhales slowly, steadying himself. “I can’t thank you enough for telling Snape to make the Wolfsbane. I can’t imagine it was easy to convince him to do it.”

He tugs at his trousers, straightening out his trousers as best as he can. When he looks back up at Albus, the headmaster is frowning at him.

“Why do you assume I made Severus brew the Wolfsbane?”

“He told me,” Remus says, a little surprised. “The first time he gave it to me. He said you’d asked him to.”

Something flickers in Albus’ eyes. “Odd,” he comments, circling his wrist to loosen it up. “Severus came to me with the idea. I had assumed the potion was not ready for use because it was still in Ministry trials. He informed me he had just brewed it successfully and could do it again.”

Remus feels as though the entire room has tilted slightly at some odd angle. He blinks, trying to clear his head. “What?”

“Severus is the reason you have the Wolfsbane. All I did was say yes.”

Remus doesn’t know what to say. “Oh.” There’s nothing else to ask but _why_ , and Albus isn’t the one with that answer.

“He doesn’t hate you, Remus,” Albus says softly.

Remus shakes his head. “I don’t know if that’s true.”

“He’s a complicated man. I think the two of you have more in common than you realize.”

Remus looks into the fire. He supposes there is one thing, at least, that he shares with Snape; they’re both still alive when they probably shouldn’t be.

Remus makes his way to the cool, dark dungeons. He’s not sure what’s propelling his feet down the stone steps, footfalls sounding into the empty air one after the other. It is Saturday; no one is about, no throngs of students toting potions textbooks and conversing frantically about their last-minute preparation for an exam. Remus hasn’t been down here more than once or twice since coming back to teach at Hogwarts. As a result, he’s built up almost no new memories to insulate him from the old ones, and he’s tossed back into his teenaged body for a moment, aching and spotty and full of hormones he doesn’t know what to do with. He shakes himself. That’s not what’s needed now.

The door to the Potions classroom is open. He looks inside, expecting to find it empty. But Severus Snape is there, bent over a table of ingredients and a simmering cauldron. Remus pauses, watching Snape mutter to himself, add a pinch of something pink to the potion, and give a pleased smile when it emits a puff of steam.

Remus knocks on the doorframe. Snape turns. As soon as he sees Remus, his smile disappears.

“Yes?” he asks curtly.

Remus steps inside. “Hello.”

Severus regards him impatiently. “What do you need?” He stiffens. “Is this about the Wolfsbane?”

“Yes, actually.”

Snape straightens, brow furrowing. “Are you experiencing side effects? Decreased potency after multiple uses?”

“No. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Remus takes a breath. “You told me at the beginning of the year that Albus had asked you to make it for me.”

Snape turns back to his potion, stirring it in three precise circles. “Did I?”

“You did. But Albus says otherwise. He says you approached him with the idea.”

Snape sniffs, gaze still directed towards his cauldron. “It was a long time ago. I can’t be expected to remember something so trivial.”

“Severus, don’t.” Remus’ voice is quiet and firm. Snape stops, then, after a moment, looks at Remus. “I…” Remus sighs. “I don’t think there’s any way I can explain to you how much this potion has changed my life. But I wanted to let you know. I—owe you a debt of gratitude.”

Snape’s lips press together in a thin line. “You don’t owe me anything, Lupin. I don’t want you in my debt.”

Remus inclines his head. “All right, then. You have my thanks, in any case.” He hesitates. It is so strange being here, having this conversation. There is so much he has been unable to say recently; he doesn’t know why he is able to say this. “I know you don’t like me, Severus. And I am sorry for all that my friends and I put you through at school, and for everything I did not stop them from doing. Honestly…” He sighs, looking at Snape’s frown, his suspicious gaze, his hooked nose. “Honestly, there’s a lot I still don’t understand about you—why you do what you do. I don’t understand what you believe or want or why Albus trusts you so deeply, but…I am glad that he does.”

Snape’s face is unreadable, though his voice is snide. “I don’t know why he trusts you.”

“Honestly,” says Remus, “I don’t know either.”

He turns to go. He has said, he supposes, what he came to say.

“Lily said—”

Remus turns back, pulled around as if by a hook on Snape’s abrupt, abortive words. “What about Lily?” Remus asks, wide-eyed.

Snape squeezes a few Bubotuber pods over his potion, which sputters and snaps. Not looking at Remus, and in a low and grudging tone, he says, “She said you weren’t like the others. She said if you removed yourself from the company of those pricks you called your friends, you’d be a decent sort.”

Speechless, Remus watches Severus prepare a vial, uncorking it and setting it beside the cauldron. “She married one of those pricks, you know.”

“Well,” Snape says, ladling a small amount of potion into the bottle and sniffing it, frowning, “she wasn’t talking to me by then.”

He dumps the potion back into the cauldron. Then he says, sharply, “She was my friend first, you know.”

“I do know.” Remus swallows. He had been so unsympathetic to Snape as Lily gradually pulled away from him at school. He’d never understood their friendship. And Snape had brought Lily’s increasing distance on himself: hanging around with those Death Eaters-in-training, bullying younger students, using the word _Mudblood_ where Lily could hear him. He had never stopped to consider that Snape might have thought of his separation from Lily a real loss; that he might have felt it far more keenly than he ever showed. But now, as he watches Snape in his classroom, chopping nettles into segments with vicious, probably excessive precision, he remembers: first year, second year, seeing red-haired Lily and dark-haired Severus lying on the Hogwarts lawns, giggling over some shared secret. Passing notes in double Transfiguration. And he realizes.

“You still care about her,” he says, staring at Snape. “You’re still upset that she died.” And that, he thinks but does not say, is something Albus must know. That is why Albus trusts him. Because Snape loved, still loves, Lily Potter.

“She died,” Snape hisses, “because of your boyfriend.”

Remus recoils. The word on Snape’s lips sounds like a curse. It is a weapon that Remus had not known Snape was keeping in reserve. Had not known he knew.

“Yes,” Remus says evenly, “she died because of my boyfriend.”

He turns and leaves, Snape watching him go with his mouth half open, for once with nothing more to say.

It happens when he is alone, sitting on the threadbare carpet of his tiny sitting room in front of the fire. He is staring into the flames, reassessing everything he remembers about Snape’s trajectory from a snotty young Slytherin into a fledgling Death Eater, about Lily’s gradual softening in the face of James’ increased allegiance to the resistance against You-Know-Who’s rise. He had assumed that as Snape fell in more tightly with the Slytherin crowd, he’d started seeing Lily like he saw all the other Muggleborns: inferior, unimportant, worthless. He had though Snape had purposely cracked their friendship in two, and that he had not cared when Lily had stopped speaking up for him and started feeling that his burgeoning bigotry and cruelty were justifiable reasons for James to hate him. Why else would Snape have acted that way?

But Remus knows what self-sabotage is. He knows the impulse to push away those who care because it is too hard to be vulnerable, to risk rejection. When Sirius had asked him yet again, back in that terrible summer of 1981, where he went on missions for the Order and why he came back harder and more distant each time, Remus had replied with icy coldness that if Sirius didn’t like him anymore, he was welcome to leave. Sirius had looked more hurt than Remus had ever seen him. Instead of apologizing, Remus had walked away.

_I think the two of you have more in common than you realize_ , Albus had said of him and Snape, and all at once the words come back to Remus like a hard, sharp blow. He crumples, a cry of grief emerging gutturally from deep within him. Apparently this is the only way he can cry this days: blindsided by feelings too strong to resist. He manages to gasp out a muffling charm before the sobs wrack through him, loud and animal. Sirius’ hurt face, shocked and drained of affection, hovers garishly in Remus’ mind. He can’t stop seeing it. He can’t stop reliving the moment. _If you don’t like me anymore you’re welcome to leave. I know you’ve been looking for an excuse._ And Sirius, wounded, a kicked puppy. Remus, walking away. _If you don’t like me, you’re welcome to leave_.

Now he’s out there in the cold, circling Hogwarts like some feral beast, claws and teeth and burrs in his fur, skin probably sagging from lack of food, an undernourished dog with hate in its eyes. How, how, how did this happen? Remus is still sobbing, though he’s barely aware of his body as something that’s part of him anymore. Every second he sits here not telling Albus what he knows he is breaking every shred of trust he’s ever earned, endangering Harry, endangering James’ son, protecting the man who murdered every last bit of hope and faith and joy within him and his friends besides; but he can’t tell Albus, can’t tell him, the shame is so huge, so enormous, a giant stifling cloak cutting off his breath. He laid with evil, welcomed it into his home. In his foolishness, his self-absorption, his will to deny the truth of who he was and what he deserved, he let something evil into his heart and refused to recognize it for what it was.

_If you don’t like me, you’re welcome to leave._ Did he push Sirius away? Is it all his fault?

Remus cries until he can’t anymore. Then, eyes puffy, sinuses stuffed and aching, he stares into the fire until it dies. Back sore from sitting too long on the floor, he puts himself to bed, splashing water on his face and pulling on a pair of loose pajama bottoms. In the dark, he stares up at the ceiling. Sleep is nowhere near. He is mute, and exhausted, and wide awake.

He tosses and turns. An hour in, it is one in the morning. Remus has to teach tomorrow. He will be useless, bleary-eyed and wooden. The warming charms have been turned up too high; he is sweating, the creases behind his knees wet and dampening his sheets.

_Fuck this_ , he thinks, his mind thick with the heavy fog of self-directed anger and resentment. He wants to lean into it. Wants something vicious and mean. Wants to fuck himself up even more.

Albus slides into his brain, somehow, his dry skin, his tiny branching wrinkles. His kind eyes.

Remus could probably go to him right now. He could probably wake the old man up and ask for— _forgiveness, pardon, absolution_ , his mind chants; _no_ , he thinks furiously— _tenderness, care_ — _no_ , _no_ , _no_ —Albus, eyes burning— _anger, reprimand, condemnation._ He could ask Albus to—fuck him, or—hold him or—but—but Remus is just Remus, small and worthless, and Albus is a giant.

A giant who once did what Remus did, though. He let evil into his bed and refused to recognize it.

Gellert Grindelwald was as pretty as Sirius had been. Remus had looked through his books until he’d found a picture of him, not so young as when he’d known Albus, but before his rise to power; he had worn his gleaming golden hair long, and his eyes, though darker than Dumbledore’s, were also a shockingly clear blue. In the photo his chin had been tilted arrogantly, a smirk on his lips. He looked as though he believed himself better than the viewer. Perhaps when Albus had been in love with him, he’d been gentler, softer; or perhaps not. Perhaps Albus was drawn to the charming arrogance, the boundary pushing, the intoxicating feeling of receiving the privileged attentions of a man who had little time for those he believed inferior.

A beautiful, brilliant boy, on his knees, casting bedroom eyes up at Albus through his long, long lashes. The edge of his mouth twisted up in an irresistibly haughty smile: _I’m gorgeous, and we both know it._ Albus’ heady disbelief that someone like _that_ would kneel for him.

_What we could do together_ … He imagines Grindelwald’s voice smooth like honey dripping from a spoon, like the darkest, richest chocolate. Albus’ eyes fluttering closed, Gellert’s fingers sliding slowly up his thighs. _Us against the world…_

Remus stops himself, coming back abruptly to his dark and overheated bedroom. His hand is gently, rhythmically moving in small circles on his stomach. He puts it beside him on the bed.

He should not be thinking these kinds of thoughts. This is not the same as imagining some stranger sucking Albus off in a back alley. This is the darkest wizard before Voldemort. This is a man responsible for thousands of wizarding deaths and for hundreds of thousands of Muggle ones, who infiltrated the Muggle Axis powers and supplied weapons for their war and gas for their camps, a man whose doctrine of purity casts its evil tendrils even into the present moment. Sirius in fact pales in comparison to Gellert Grindelwald. His crimes are intimate, his treachery so deeply personal. Grindelwald is a fascist, a war criminal, a genocidal mass murderer.

Remus exhales. He feels such twisted disgust with himself. Such self-sabotaging misery. He puts his hand on his cock. He needs to sleep, doesn’t he? So he’ll get off and then he’ll sleep. What does it matter what evil little fantasies he has, when what he is doing in real life is so much worse?

_What we could do together_ , and Grindelwald with his hand around Albus’ neck, squeezing; _the power you and I could wield._ Albus sucking in thin weak breaths, letting Gellert do it. Grindelwald’s hand on his own cock, and Albus’ neglected and hard.

_You know,_ Grindelwald whispering into Albus’ ear, golden thigh thrust between Albus’ legs so Albus can rub himself against it like a dog. _You know what I am. It turns you on._

Remus slides his hand rapidly up and down his cock, eyes screwed up tight.

Albus choking and fucking himself on Grindelwald’s leg. Grindelwald jerking himself off. Remus’ fantasy splinters into shards that whirl before his eyes: golden hair glinting in the sun, a pair of bruised knees, long fingers entering an open mouth, a boot grinding something into the dirt. Two men drunk on power, on their own brilliance, defying every god and law to make love because what god or law has jurisdiction over them? _They could catch us here, wizard or Muggle, and we’d Obliviate them so hard they’d forget their own names. We could sodomize each other in the middle of every city square in Europe if we wanted to. We’d wipe all their memories clean, we’d make them smile and tell us to carry on. We could force them to watch. We could force them to pleasure us. We could force them to like it._

_We won’t:_ a whisper. _But…_

_But?_

_We could._

Remus comes violently, legs jerking, spunk spurting onto his tugged-down pajama bottoms. There is little pleasure in it. Halfway through his brief orgasm he already wants it to stop; guilt is clogging his veins, thick and heavy. He cleans himself as quickly as he can and curls up underneath the covers, squeezing his eyes shut.

Disgust with himself weighs him down. But soon exhaustion overwhelms even that, and Remus falls into a deep, dreamless sleep.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading, everyone. I hope you're as safe and well as you can be. Much love <3

The school year continues. It’s a stormy spring. Remus spends a lot of time sitting by the window, listening to the rain as he marks papers and plans lessons.

Dumbledore comes to him, or he goes to Dumbledore, every two or three weeks. Remus still does not tell him what he knows about Sirius. They don’t talk about Remus’ teary conversation with Elphias Doge in Albus’ bathroom. He is uncomfortable, a little, to think that Albus knows about his breakdown. But he is resigned, too; just one more broken, hidden thing the omnipresent headmaster has discovered lurking behind Remus’ walls.

Poppy Pomfrey takes to chatting with him in the staff room during her afternoon break from the hospital wing. She tells him stories about the worst injuries she has seen at Hogwarts, and the ones that were the most difficult not to laugh at. He is, as ever, startled by her warmth.

Minerva McGonagall frowns and offers him a biscuit every time he passes by her office. She says nothing, but Remus is sure now that she knows about the nature of his relationship with Sirius and is worried about his state of mind with Sirius on the loose. It seems that living in close proximity to other people, as he has done for the first time since September, means they are able to guess things about his moods. He appreciates Minerva’s reticence, and the biscuits.

Harry comes closer and closer to producing a corporeal Patronus. Remus can’t at first recognize the sensation in his chest, swelling and warm, whenever Harry makes progress. He realizes eventually that it is pride. He thinks it might also be love.

“I must congratulate you.” Filius Flitwick is standing at his elbow, looking impressed. The last of Remus’ third-years has just emerged from the magical creature obstacle course Remus has constructed for their exam, looking harried but triumphant. “Quite an ingenious exam format. Practical, but in a controlled environment. I find we often struggle to achieve the right balance between safety and educational challenge at Hogwarts, don’t we? I’m very glad you’re on the staff, Mr. Lupin. You really are a boon to your students, particularly in these troubling times.”

He pats Remus on the arm and meanders off to administer his last exam of the week. Remus, whose proctoring duties are officially over, watches him go while swallowing down the knot that has lodged itself in his throat. He surveys the exam area. Time to collect the Red Caps, the Hinkypunk, the Grindylow, and the Boggart. It’s a funny little exercise, really, almost as if he is taking the exam himself.

When he opens the cupboard to release the Boggart, he raises his wand in anticipation of the usual glowing orb, the moon hanging in the sky that reminds him of the worst nights of his life. But with a _crack_ , the Boggart transforms into something new. In front of Remus, a chair materializes—a _chair_? Confusion blossoms for a moment and then in a heart-stopping second Remus recognizes it: a faded, patched old armchair with the stuffing nearly flattened by decades of use, brown and lumpy and utterly familiar. It is the one piece of furniture Remus kept from the flat he shared with Sirius. By the time he’d paid the rent and deposit on a new place and purchased a secondhand bed and a pockmarked table with a single chair, he hadn’t had any money for a sofa or armchair. So he’d convinced himself it was worth taking this one with him. It had cast a pall over his new home, a stubborn reminder of Sirius’ limbs and torso sprawled out in repose. Remus had sat in that chair every day for twelve years. When he got the position at Hogwarts, he left it there for the landlord to dispose of; he couldn’t bear dealing with it himself for one more minute. He supposes she probably burned it. He hopes so.

But now the chair is sitting before him, every rip and stain precisely as it is in Remus’ memory, and though it is empty it carries as it always did the memory of the time _before_. There is more to it now, though: it holds not only the echo of Sirius, laughing and lounging and getting ready to betray him; it calls up the feeling of Remus alone in his flat, no one to touch or talk to.

“ _Riddikulus_ ,” he says hoarsely, raising his wand. The chair merely flickers, then reasserts itself, solid as ever. Remus realizes he is holding his breath and that every muscle in his body is wound tight. He forces his shoulders to loosen, his lungs to move again. The chair confronts him, empty and immovable. He closes his eyes, then opens them again.

“ _Riddikulus_ ,” he says firmly. And with a _crack_ , Harry is sitting in the chair, legs crossed, grinning up at him, emerald eyes sparkling beneath his crooked glasses.

With a huge _whoosh_ of breath Remus lets out a relieved sigh and, eyes prickling, hurriedly corrals the Boggart into his battered suitcase.

That evening, Remus unfolds the Marauder’s Map. He has left it resting, blank and empty, in a locked drawer in his office since he looked at it the night he confiscated it from Harry. Now he pulls it out, the thick paper familiar between his fingers, if slightly more brittle than it was fifteen-plus years ago, and rests the tip of his wand in its center.

“I solemnly swear,” he says, “I am up to no good.”

The lines of ink sweep across the page in glorious motion, an effect they’d spent days perfecting. Remus runs his fingers along the borders of the Great Hall and the arcing staircase leading up to the second floor. He shifts his gaze to the sixth-floor corridors, which he and Peter had been in charge of mapping over one cold, wintry week. He can still remember the gray light that filtered through snowy windowpanes, the drafty corners, the explosive sneezes Peter, who had a cold, let out every few minutes. The Fat Friar eventually came to check and see who was making all the racket, and they had to convince him Peter didn’t need to report to the hospital wing for some sinus-clearing potion “and a tipple of brandy.”

Remus allows a smile to flit across his face at the memory. His eyes stray to the Astronomy Tower, where James had snuck off during a lesson to measure the dimensions of the professor’s office and nearly been caught; only Sirius shouting “Merlin’s balls, Mars is gone!” had caused sufficient chaos to give James enough time to reemerge.

He sighs, and turns his attention to the grounds, and the real reason he has opened the map tonight. Buckbeak’s execution is scheduled for sunset. If he has learned anything about Harry and his friends this year, they will not let Rubeus Hagrid suffer through it alone, curfews and dangers be damned.

And there they are: _Harry Potter, Hermione Granger, Ron Weasley_. Three tiny names tucked together and moving across the lawn. No doubt the three of them are huddled under James’ Invisibility Cloak. Remus can barely remember being so small that more than one person could fit underneath it comfortably. By the end of their time at Hogwarts, the four of them became a set of disembodied legs and elbows when they tried to share. Judging by Ron Weasley’s growth spurts alone, that moment isn’t far off for Harry and his friends. But for now they are young enough to escape detection as they hurry across the grounds toward the gamekeeper’s hut.

Remus sighs. He drums his fingers on his desk. Once they enter Hagrid’s home, they vanish; the house is a blank spot on the map, as are all the staff’s living quarters, which were the only places in the castle they never managed to sneak into. Some of them, as it turns out, aren’t even on the map; Albus’ cottage, wherever it exists in space, is absent, though Remus’ own rooms are there as a small empty rectangle.

He isn’t about to turn Harry in, but he knows all too well that it’s not safe for him to be wandering around. Hopefully Hagrid will ensure they head straight back to the castle, but…he sighs again, and settles in to keep watch. Snape isn’t due with the Wolfsbane for another hour; he won’t catch Remus with the map just yet.

Ten minutes pass, then twenty. Finally, a movement on the parchment pulls him back to attention. Good: they’ll return to the castle, and Remus can go to bed.

 _Harry Potter_ emerges onto the map, followed by _Hermione Granger._ The last name to pop back up is _Ron Weasley._ But—wait. No. It isn’t the last.

Remus blinks, for the first half a second only mildly confused. Then his brain absorbs the name that has appeared next to the trio of friends.

 _Peter Pettigrew_.

He stands, knocking the inkwell off the desk, heart hammering, and stares at the map. His brain struggles to string thoughts together.

 _It is a mistake,_ he thinks reasonably. The first words that his mind can produce are so reasonable. _That is impossible, so it is a mistake._

Then Peter’s name jumps ahead of the others, hurtling away into the expanse of the grounds. _Ron Weasley_ sets off after him, leaving the other two behind.

 _Oh my god,_ thinks Remus’ brain, _oh my god_ —

Harry and Hermione catch up with Ron, and with—

With Peter.

Remus stares at the map, the world crashing down around his ears.

And then the name _Sirius Black_ darts across the map.

It joins Ron and Peter. Then all three of them move jerkily in the direction of the Whomping Willow. A second later, all five names have vanished.

Pulse so loud he has grown deaf to anything else, Remus summons his cloak and strides out of the castle.

Sirius.

Gaunt, hollow-eyed, and with a bitter cruel edge Remus has never seen in him before. But. Sirius.

When they throw their arms around each other, Remus clasps the back of his neck, breathing him in deep, and Sirius’ hands scrabble at his back. There is no time for more. When they step away from each other, Remus feels thirteen years younger.

It is Snape, in the end, who ruins it all; Snape, who must have been unable to stand Remus knowing his secret about Lily, or who hated that Remus got his friend back and his was beyond saving. Or it was his bigotry, or the claw-tight grip he keeps on his grudges, or maybe he is really on the wrong side of things after all—Remus doesn’t know. Somewhere within the vast cloud of anger that swarms inside him is the awareness that Snape himself might not know why he refuses to support the true story, any more than Remus understands the choices he’s made all that year.

But that comes later, after he awakens bruised and bloodied on the grounds, after he limps back to the castle, terror in his throat, after Poppy Pomfrey clasps his battered body gently and tends to his wounds. After Minerva arrives with a message from Albus, who is busy performing extensive damage control with Cornelius Fudge, to tell him that Sirius is once again gone.

Dawn breaks. Remus returns to his rooms. He recognizes nothing about himself, not his hands or feet or the small array of items he’s accumulated over the course of the past year. Whose mug is that? Whose battered notebook? Whose fingers, whose heart?

On the morning after James and Lily had died, after Peter had staged his own death and Sirius had been dragged laughing maniacally off to Azkaban, Remus had been acutely aware, through the stifling smog of shock and horror and grief, of only one thing: he would never be the same again.

It is the one thing he knows on this morning, this morning of staggering revelation and impossible relief and terrible disappointment and a tiny bloom of hope: he will never be the same again.

“Remus,” says Albus, as Remus walks into the headmaster’s office, summoned at last. Remus, though still absorbing all that has just happened, is aware in some part of his body that Albus knows everything now, knows the depth of Remus’ deceit, this year and in years past, and his fingertips know to shake, his chest to grow cold, as he mounts the stairs.

“Remus,” says Albus again, and all at once Remus is in his arms, burying his face into the elderly man’s shoulder and taking great gasping breaths. Albus clenches his fists tightly in Remus’ sweater, holding him as if a strong enough grip will shield him from everything that has happened and everything that still will.

 _I can’t ask this of him_ , Remus’ mind interjects in protest, and he jerks himself back, trying to pull away. Albus simply holds on, stroking Remus’ back until Remus’ breathing steadies.

“Do you still love him?” Albus asks quietly.

“Yes,” Remus gasps out, and then feels the wet warmth of a tear falling down Albus’ wrinkled cheek.

“Good,” he says softly but fiercely, and lets Remus go. Remus, shuddering, rubs his face with his hands.

“He is safe,” says Albus. “For the moment, he is safe. I can promise you that. He flew away on Rubeus Hagrid’s hippogriff, but the Ministry believe he escaped on foot.”

Remus nods, swallowing. His blood is still crashing in his ears.

Albus moves away, crossing to the window, probably to give them both time to recover. “If Snape would just trust you about what happened—” Remus blurts out, and then falls silent.

Albus looks at him.

He deflates. He has no grounds on which to lecture anyone else for not trusting Dumbledore. “I’m sorry,” he says quietly. “I should have told you everything I knew as soon as I got to Hogwarts.”

For another long moment, Albus surveys him without speaking. “Yes,” he says gravely. “I am sure you are aware just how much danger you put Harry in, and all the other students and staff, by keeping the information about Sirius’ Animagus abilities secret this year.” He pauses. “I am equally sure that you did not do so to assist a man you believed to be a murderer and traitor, and that the guilt you feel has been immense, and will continue to be so. Am I right?”

Remus nods.

“Remus,” says Albus, some of the hardness gone from his voice, “as headmaster, what you did was inexcusable. As someone who cares for you, however, my advice to you is this. I know how deeply some secrets lodge themselves within you. I have kept to myself things much worse than yours, out of cowardice, out of fear, out of the knowledge that were I to share them, my complicity and guilt would be blindingly apparent even to those who admire me most. I cannot with any authority tell you not to keep your secrets. But…” He hesitates. “I can say, find someone to share them with. One person you know will not waver in the face of your most dreadful darknesses. I understand why that person cannot be me. I am…” A moment, a flicker of something on his face: regret? Remorse? “I am sorry that that person cannot be me. Yet you cannot remain alone like this, Remus. It is slowly killing every worthy, compassionate, courageous part of you. If you believe yourself too wounded, too twisted out of shape to open yourself up to the world, let one person in.”

Remus swallows over the lump in his throat. “How do I know who to choose?”

Albus shakes his head. “I don’t know. Sometimes we get it wrong.” He looks at Remus. “Sometimes we get it right.”

Remus nods. Albus’ words make him feel so terrifyingly peeled-open his body is urging him to leave, now, as soon as he can; but there is also a knot of affection tightening in his chest as he drinks in the fine lines creasing Albus’ face, the wise blue eyes, the long silver beard. He turns to go, then stops.

“Oh,” he says. He can’t believe he’d almost forgotten. “I heard, you know. From Nearly Headless Nick, on my way here. Snape told the Slytherins that I am a werewolf. So. I suppose you’ll be wanting my resignation.”

Albus raises his eyebrows. “Why would I want that?”

A huff of impatience escapes Remus’ lungs. “Albus. You know perfectly well I cannot teach here if that knowledge is public. The parents will raise hell—parents of students in all four houses. You know how that will end.”

“I don’t know anything of the sort,” Albus says mildly. “But it doesn’t matter what I think. Minerva is responsible for your employment here, as I think you’ll remember, and she has informed me that she has no intention of firing you.”

Remus stares.

“You’d better talk to her,” says Albus. “I can only speak with you about the situation in a non-professional capacity. As your friend, that is.”

Remus blinks rapidly. He nods.

“Whatever you do,” says Albus, “I am proud of you.”

As Remus walks down the stairs back into the corridor, he glimpses the ever-growing whirlwind of emotions swirling inside him, pulling him closer and closer. Soon, he thinks, he will let himself be sucked in; but first, he has to see Minerva.

“I shall certainly not be terminating your employment,” she says firmly, with a hint of indignation as if Remus is insulting her by suggesting it. That part, he thinks, is a bit put on; he is in no way surprising her with his assumption that he must leave the school.

“Minerva,” says Remus. “You will lose students.”

“And where are they going to go?” she says challengingly. “Beauxbatons? Ilvermorny? Show me the pureblood parent who believes a foreign school is superior to Hogwarts.”

“It won’t just be purebloods,” Remus replies with exasperation. “It will be anyone who is concerned for their child’s safety. And honestly, after last night—”

“Are you telling me to engage in discriminatory hiring practices?” she asks, fixing her eyes on him. “Is that what you think the student body of Hogwarts deserves? Decisions about who will teach them rooted in ignorance and prejudice?”

Remus rubs his forehead. “It’s—it would be a battle with the Ministry, Minerva. You know that. It would likely end up in front of the Wizengamot and the repercussions would be enormous for all werewolves—”

Minerva’s lips pinch into a thin line. “I am aware of that, Remus,” she says. Then, more hesitantly, she asks, “Are you…unwilling to go through all that?”

Remus looks out the window at the sunny grounds below. “I don’t know,” he says quietly. “Maybe I should. Maybe it would do some good if I did. But…”

“Do you honestly believe yourself to be a threat to the students’ safety?”

“Yes,” he says, turning back to her. “I do. I am.” He holds up a hand. “Whether the risks are worth taking…” He sighs. “I don’t know. I really don’t.”

Minerva crosses toward him and clasps his arm. “I do,” she says. “Let us stand by you, Remus.”

He pulls her in for a hug. She lets out a surprised little noise and, after a second, embraces him tightly.

“Thank you,” he says hoarsely. “I…can’t tell you what that means to me. But…” He takes a breath. “I’m not leaving because I believe I am a danger to the students. I’m leaving because—” For a second, the words don’t come. Then, after a deep breath in and out, the hold on his throat loosens. “I’m leaving so I can go after him.”

Minerva’s hand flies to her mouth. “Oh,” she says. “Oh, Remus.”

“Please don’t tell me it would be safer for both of us if I didn’t.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” she says. “But Remus…”

“Yes?”

“Say goodbye to Harry before you go.”

Harry does not want him to leave. Remus wavers more before him than either Albus or Minerva; he is sorry, so truly and deeply sorry about so many things, all the things he couldn’t give Harry and all the things he could still give him and is now taking away. But someday—someday, if Remus has anything to say about it, Sirius Black will be cleared of all crimes. And Harry will go to live with his godfather. And with Remus, if Harry, and Sirius, will have him.

He gives Harry back the map. It belongs to him. It belongs to him and Ron and Hermione, the friends Harry has chosen. He thinks—he hopes—he has chosen well.

He leaves at dinnertime, when the school is gathered in the Great Hall. The sun is low and bright. The Dementors, for the first time since Remus arrived last fall, have left the gates.

Remus closes his eyes, takes a deep breath, and lets a rush of joy wash over him.

He made his choice, all those years ago. He is making it again, now.

The difference is that he has since grown up: he was a child, then. He is not a child anymore.

He leaves Hogwarts and Disapparates, vanishing into the evening air.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for giving this very specific pairing a try. <3 I'll be adding tags as I post each chapter. This fic is pretty much finished, so I'll be posting once or twice a week.


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